Three gang members guilty of shooting that left girl paralysed
LONDON. March 27. KAZINFORM Members of a street gang responsible for killing three teenagers in 20 months have been convicted of shooting a five-year-old girl and leaving her paralysed for life. Three of the group were convicted on Monday of wounding Thushara Kamaleswaran, who was caught up in a tit-for-tat shooting as she played in her uncle's shop in Stockwell, south London, in March last year.
Notorious in the area, the Gas gang is on a Scotland Yard list of 60 "high harm" gangs in the capital, the Guardian reports.
The chaotic grouping of young men, noted for their violence and a lack of remorse shown by those brought to justice, is also heavily involved in drug dealing, street crime , muggings and bike robberies in its heartland around Myatt's Fields in Brixton, south London.
Thusha, as she was better known, was shot during a spate of violence the pace and intensity of which heaped pressure on the police for many months and prompted fears that the gang is out of control.
At the Old Bailey, Nathaniel Grant, 21, Kazeem Kolawole, 19, and Anthony McCalla, 20, were convicted unanimously of wounding Thusha and another innocent victim in the shop at the time. Roshan Selvakumar, 35, who had been buying groceries, was shot in the face and has been left with bullet fragments permanently lodged in his head.
Paramedics fought to save Thusha's life, operating on her in the street after the bullet passed through her chest. Surgeons saved her again when she suffered a second heart attack in hospital.
She remains paralysed from the waist down and spends much of her life at Stoke Mandeville hospital, Buckinghamshire.
Now six, she will have to wear a brace and leg splints permanently, and may have to undergo repeated operations to prevent her spine curving. All her life she will be reliant on a wheelchair and will require round-the-clock assistance.
Three weeks ago extra officers were drafted into Lambeth as police imposed a random stop and search power - known as a section 60 order - across the borough after seven stabbings in five days culminated in the killing of 17-year-old Kwame Ofosu-Asare.
He was the third teenager in 20 months to die at the hands of the Gas gang, some of whom are aged as young as 12 or 13, whose members arm themselves with household knives or guns, riding around streets between Coldharbour Lane and Brixton Road on bikes.
In court on Monday, Thusha's mother said she still cries when she thinks about her daughter's fate and future.
"It's hard for all at home to see an innocent child hopping around like a rabbit, now paralysed," said prosecutor Michelle Nelson, reading Sharmila Kamaleswaran's statement on behalf of the family. "She was a playful child, always happy and smiling and was a good student at school."
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