Damilola killers jailed for 8 years each

LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) Two brothers were sentenced today to 8 years each in jail for killing Nigerian schoolboy Damilola Taylor, ending a six-year investigation marred by legal and forensic blunders.

Danny Preddie, 18, and Ricky Preddie, 19, from Peckham, south London, were convicted in August of the manslaughter of 10-year-old Taylor who died after being stabbed in the leg with a broken bottle.

He bled to death on the stairwell of a run-down housing estate in November 2000, just months after arriving in the country.

CCTV footage played on television after his death showed a boy skipping home from the library moments before he died.

The Preddie brothers, who were 12 and 13 at the time of the killing, had both denied manslaughter at the Old Bailey.

When they were convicted, Taylor's parents Richard and Gloria said it was a ''great comfort that justice has finally been done for Damilola''.

The verdicts came after three high-profile trials and a long and difficult investigation by London police.

Four other youths were originally charged with murder but were cleared at a trial in 2002 that collapsed after the judge dismissed the evidence of the key witness, a teenage girl known as ''Bromley'', who was labelled a fantasist by the defence.

The Preddie brothers, who had been on bail at the time of the killing, were amongst the first suspects to be arrested for the crime in the weeks after the attack but they were later released without charge.

(MISSED FORENSIC EVIDENCE) They were only re-arrested after new forensic evidence came to light. Blood traces found on the suspects' clothing, had been missed at the time of the killing by the Home Office's Forensic Science Service.

Detective Superintendent Nick Ephgrave, who took over the running of the investigation at the end of the first trial, asked a different laboratory, run by private firm Forensic Alliance, to re-examine all the items in the case.

The lab found that a bloodstain on a shoe, easily visible to the human eye, had been missed, along with blood drops and fibres on the suspects' other clothes.

The Preddie brothers were cleared of murdering Taylor by a jury in April, but a retrial was ordered after that jury failed to reach a verdict on the lesser, manslaughter charges.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates described the case as a ''painful episode'' for the Metropolitan Police.

The police investigation alone into the killing has cost almost 4 million pounds.

The government has ordered an independent inquiry into what went wrong.

REUTERS PDM BS1835