A key suspect in the murder of Stephen Lawrence has been publicly identified for the first time.
He is Matthew White, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 50. According to the BBC, the Met Police seriously handled important enquiries about him improperly.
As a result, the Met has made the almost unheard-of move of designating White as a suspect.
“Unfortunately, too many mistakes were made in the initial investigation,” says Scotland Yard.
“The impact of them continues to be seen,” reads the statement from Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Ward.
Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Stephen’s mother, said there should be “serious sanctions” against the police officers who failed to investigate White, following the BBC’s revelations.
“Only when police officers lose their jobs can the public have confidence that failure and incompetence will not be tolerated and that change will happen,” she said.
The most notable racist slaying in the UK occurred thirty years ago with the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The first police investigation’s failure sparked a historic public inquiry, the results of which revealed institutional racism at the Met.
In April 1993, a group of young white guys killed 18-year-old Stephen by stabbing him to death in Eltham, southeast London. Together with his friend Duwayne Brooks, he had been waiting for a bus.
The information acquired by the BBC against White casts doubt on Scotland Yard’s decision to halt its investigation of the case in 2020 and implicates additional suspects who are still at large.