Sharmaarke Hassan

Sharmaarke Hassan was shot in the back of the head in Gilbeys Yard in Camden.

He had been sat on a bench in Gilbeys Yard estate in Camden with some friends at about 11pm on 24 May 2008 on the Saturday night when someone came up and shot him in the head from behind. He was taken to hospital where he died the following Wednesday night.

He was said to have been sat on a bench in Gilbey’s Yard at the time he was shot overlooking The Regent’s Canal. It was said that the bench was a hang-out for drug dealers from the Camden High Street and King’s Cross areas.

Three people were tried for his murder but acquitted. Evidence against them consisted mainly of mobile phone tracking that placed some of them in Camden at the time. However, there was no forensic evidence to link them to the scene. Hours of CCTV was presented at the trial and police said that some of the evidence had been lost when a disk drive became corrupt.

Police said that they thought that Sharmaarke Hassan  had been a member of The Money Squad gang and that he was a drug dealer. The Money Squad gang was one of many Somali gangs in the area. He also had drugs convictions having been found guilty of possessing cannabis and offering to supply the drug the month before at Thames Youth Court and given a one-year community punishment order and ordered to do 40 hours of community service.

It was also said that local authorities had tried to ban alleged gang members from Camden at an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Asbo) hearing a fortnight before forbidding them from meeting more than five named individuals. Sharmaarke Hassan was on the list of people to be banned but that a district judge refused the interim orders on all but three of the people targeted, not including Sharmaarke Hassan. However, Sharmaarke Hassan did have another Asbo order against him, imposed on 2 November 2007, banning him from Buck Street in Camden which he breached the following day which he had been convicted for as well as a conviction for stealing a Cartier watch worth £2k.

Police said that rival gangs included the Silent Movers, Centric Boys and All Bout Money (ABM) group.

Gilbeys Yard was described as a stronghold for The Money Squad gang.

He had been with two friends at the time who said that he just went down. One of his friends said 'Sharkey went down to the ground. We went to him and saw the back of his head and blood was coming out. I turned him over and took my t-shirt off to try and stem the blood. I was trying to wake him up to see if he would speak to me'.

Three months before his murder he had been stabbed in the buttock at a fairground in Hampstead Heath.

The night before he was shot another member of The Money Squad gang was also shot in the stomach with a shotgun and several other gang members had also been attacked in the previous months.

The murder weapon was never found.

One of the people tried for his murder was a 15-year-old schoolboy who was said to have been a member of the Silent Movers and who was said to have been robbed by a member The Money Squad gang several hours before Sharmaarke Hassan was shot. It was suggested that he had then recruited two other friends to carry out a revenge attack.

It was thought that Sharmaarke Hassan might have been shot in mistake and that one of the friends that he was with who was known to be in The Money Squad gang was with him and might have been the actual target.

He had lived in Agar Grove in Camden Town and was known as Sharkey to his friends.