Laughing teenagers jailed for killing homeless man

Three teenagers who posed for selfies after killing a homeless man near London’s King’s Cross station have been jailed.

Eymaiyah Lee Bradshaw-McKoy, 18, Mia Campos-Jorge, 19, and Jaidee Bingham, 18, chased and beat up Anthony Marks, 51, on August 10 2024.

Mr Marks suffered a head injury with bleeding on the brain from which he died five weeks later.

Photographs from the night featured the laughing teenagers, then aged 16 and 17, before and after they carried out the killing.

Drug dealer Bingham, known as Ghost, caused the fatal injury by striking Mr Marks over the head twice with a glass bottle after he had fallen to the ground.

Audio from a CCTV camera picked up male and female voices shouting: “Hit him again. Kick kicking. Do it again. Have you learned your lesson yet?”

As they made off in a car with false number plates, the youths were seen on video recordings in a mood of celebration with Bingham saying: “We messed up a man today.”

The assault was said to have been a “punishment” beating after one of the young women, who worked as drug runners, was violently robbed.

Police pieced together events and identified the defendants from CCTV footage and analysis of mobile phones.

On Monday, Bingham, from Dagenham, was locked up for life with a minimum term of 16 years after being found guilty of murder by a jury.

Bradshaw-McKoy, from Brixton, was locked up for 47 months, and Campos-Jorge, from Tottenham, handed 42 months in custody after being convicted of manslaughter.

Sentencing at the Old Bailey on Monday, Judge Mark Dennis KC said Bingham had “elevated” the confrontation by picking up the bottle and using it with “severe violence”.

The court had previously heard how staff at King’s Cross station alerted emergency services after finding Mr Marks stumbling near the main concourse, with blood dripping from his head, shortly before 6am.

He was in a “critical condition” when paramedics arrived and took him to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington.

A CT scan showed bleeding on his brain caused by the attack, on top of a pre-existing injury, the court heard.

In a police interview, Mr Marks described being assaulted outside the closed McGlynn’s pub, during a row with the dealer Ghost about stolen crack cocaine.

He told officers: “I met my local drug dealer, his name’s Ghost, he has a complaint. He’s complained that one of the smokers had taken some drugs off one of the subsidiary girls and had run away with it.

“I told him basically it’s got nothing to do with me, but he claims that I know who the people were. I said, yeah, I know who they were, but I never took nothing off them.”

He said Ghost and the two women had chased him towards the pub where he was stamped on and hit.

On being discharged from hospital, Mr Marks was transferred to prison on August 13 2024 for breaching his licence after an earlier release.

In custody, he complained of headaches and slurred speech, but was not referred for another brain scan, the court was told.

On August 29 2024, prison staff were called to his cell after he had a seizure, the jury heard.

He underwent emergency surgery at King’s College Hospital where he died on September 14 2024 from bleeding on the brain caused by the violent attack a month before.

Prosecutor Hugh Davies KC had said there were “some missed opportunities” for medical intervention, but Mr Marks would not have died if he had not been assaulted in the first place.

Following the youths’ convictions, Detective Inspector Jim Barry, of Scotland Yard, said it was a “callous murder” that shed light on the “ruthless brutality of county lines gangs”.

He said: “The ages of Bingham, Bradshaw-McKoy and Campos-Jorge are particularly shocking. But the fact that they were teenagers does not excuse their violent actions as part of a drug line that has brought fear and intimidation to London’s streets.

“They believed they had escaped justice, even posing for selfies together and laughing about what they had done. There is a sense of justice that officers were able to use these to place them at the scene of the crime.”