One of Damilola Taylor’s killers put lives at risk in a moped chase with police through crowds of people, a court has heard.
Ricky Preddie, 37, was riding his cousin’s Yamaha in Chiswick, west London, when police spotted him and flagged him down to stop.
But he instead reached speeds of 50mph in the 20mph zones before weaving in and out of football fans and driving through red lights before jumping into a river.
Prosecutor Harriet Palfreman described it as a ‘prolonged, persistent and deliberate course of dangerous driving’.
Preddie was previously jailed for four years and banned from driving until 2033 after he reversed into PC Natalia Trzeciak on the pavement to avoid a stop in Wembley, north-west London, in 2019.
He admitted a charge of dangerous driving at Isleworth Crown Court for the latest offence and was given another year’s ban and ordered to complete 240 hours of unpaid work, reported The Sun.
Ms Palfreman told the court Preddie had driving the motorcycle through two red lights, mounted a pavement, and did a U-turn in the middle of the road.
She said there was a large number of pedestrians in the area at the time ‘due to a football match’.
Preddie was just 13 when he and his younger brother Danny slaughtered the youngster as he walked home from the library.
The pair used a broken beer bottle to stab Damilola in the leg, with the stricken schoolboy later found bleeding to death in a stairwell near his home in Peckham, South London.
Ricky and Danny were jailed for eight years in 2006 for the manslaughter Damilola in November 2000 – with Preddie freed in September 2010 having served two thirds his sentence, while his younger brother was released in September 2011.
The criminal menace was last caged for four years back in February 2020 after running over a police officer in Wembley, north London.
Preddie’s heinous life of crime started as a 13-year-old child, with the abhorrent killing of Damilola Taylor.
The hard working schoolboy had moved to Britain from Nigeria a few months before he was stabbed in the thigh with a broken beer bottle by Preddie and his brother as he walked home from the library after school.
Harrowing CCTV footage from the night the 10-year-old died, on November 27, 2000, showed him leaving Peckham Library at 4.51pm.
Damilola appeared happy as he skipped home with a smile on his face – but just 15 minutes later he was bleeding to death in a disgusting, grime-covered stairwell.
The 10-year-old was stabbed in the leg with a piece of broken glass and had collapsed in the concrete stairwell close to his home. Within 30 minutes, he was dead.
The boy’s death shocked the nation and became one of London’s most high-profile killings – with England legend Rio Ferdinand, who grew up on the same estate in Peckham where Damilola died, making a direct appeal to local children for information about the slaying.
Star Wars actor John Boyega was Damilola’s friend. He and his sister Grace were some of the last people to see the youngster alive, with the actor this year opening up about the killing of his childhood pal, which he said had been ‘life-changing’.
It took six years and three trials to identify and convict the killers. Danny and Ricky Preddie, members of the ‘Young Peckham Boys’ gang, were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years at the trial at the Old Bailey in August 2006.
Danny was released from prison early in September 2011 after serving five years of his sentence.