This week 10, 20, 30 years ago
10 Years Ago
A headteacher described the “devastating loss” of a five year-old boy knocked down and killed by a lorry as he crossed the road near his school.
The unnamed boy was walking with his mum in St George’s Road, Elephant & Castle, when he was hit.
The Charlotte Sharman Primary School pupil was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
A man accused of gunning down a 23-year-old in the street told jurors he thought he was going to a cannabis deal, a court heard.
Matthew Taylor, 24, admitted he was sitting in his car just a few hundred yards away from the shooting in a quiet residential road in Brockley.
But he told the Old Bailey he did not hear any of the shots that killed Matthew Clement, 23, in the early hours of May 30, 2010.
The court heard CCTV cameras captured his car driving around the area shortly before Mr Clement’s fatal shooting outside 69 Whitbread Road, just after 1.30am.
Taylor told jurors he parked in Comerford Road waiting for his friend Perry Walters, 25, to come back to the car.
Taylor and Walters were eventually cleared of the killing at earlier hearings, while Taurean Davis, of Nunhead, was convicted of his murder.
An attempt to prevent the extradition of two men facing terror charges in the US failed.
Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan, both from Tooting, were detained without charge for several years on suspicion of running a website linked to terrorism.
20 Years Ago
A cash-strapped council was forced to stump up £1m to save a city academy school.
The £22m City Academy in Clapham was set to open in 2004, but the council was told that the new school would have to be scrapped if Lambeth council did not pay up.
Parents had been campaigning for the new school for several years and the old Henry Thornton School site in Elms Road, Clapham had been earmarked for the new school.
However in 1999 the Labour-run council had promised the site to Lambeth College and agreed to pay the college £1m if the site was then sold.
But under the Liberal-Conservative administration the college was told that, as the site was being leased to the academy and not sold, the authority would not pay up.
The academy owners, the Church Schools Company, threatened to pull out rather than wait for a lengthy legal battle between the college and the council was forced to pay up.
Police launched a search for a mum who abandoned her newborn baby in a toilet.
The baby girl, who was dubbed Crystal after she was found in a toilet cubicle in Crystal Palace Park, was four or five hours old when she was abandoned.
The child was taken to Lewisham Hospital and was reported to be doing well.
A young teacher quit his job after just one day after he returned home to find his flat had been ransacked by burglars.
The burglary happened as children were preparing to return to Crawford Primary School in Camberwell at the start of the academic year in September.
30 Years Ago
A war of words erupted between NHS bosses after staff at St Thomas’ Hospital in Waterloo said three other sites should close to save their own.
The future of St Thomas’ was looking doubtful with the publication of a Government report into the future of healthcare provision.
But St Thomas’ bit back saying that Dulwich, Hither Green and the Brook hospitals should close. St Thomas’ staff proposal would mean 850 beds being lost in South London.
The first drivers were caught on the controversial new speed cameras in South London.
The Government was keeping tight-lipped over the number and location of the cameras.
The South Circular was among the roads to be fitted with the Gatso cameras, which were able to trace owners and pinpoint a time when the offending car had been on the road for the first time.
The new cameras were brought in amid Government claims that for every 1mph reduction in average speed would result in an 11 per cent reduction in fatal accidents.
Drivers caught on camera were slapped with a £32 fine.
Education officers warned that an increase in the number of children crossing borough lines to go to school would leave Lewisham council with a £5m bill by 1998.
It was revealed that about 200 Lewisham students aged 11 – about six per cent – had taken up secondary school places outside the borough.
Council officers warned that the Government money given to the authority per child would cost £5m by 1998 if the trend continued.