A drill rapper who shot dead a gang rival outside a baby’s birthday party and boasted about the murder in a video has been jailed for life along with three accomplices.
Kammar Henry-Richards shot Kacey Boothe, 25, at Peterhouse Community Centre in Walthamstow, northeast London, in August 2022.
Mr Boothe was there for the first birthday of his friend Khalid Samanter’s one-year-old child.
Days later Henry-Richards, known as Kay-O, bragged about the killing in a video called Kay-O Laughing Stock, rapping that he used the same gun to injure the victim’s brother two years earlier.
The lyrics read: “Big Boothe and Little got hit, same sig, that’s a sour family.
“Both got slapped at functions, neck and head, handguns come handy.”
In another version, the lyrics read: “Big Boothe shoulda lurked, got his neck back ripped. Lil’ got burst, shoulda bin with his.”
Henry-Richards, 26, was jailed for life at the Old Bailey with a minimum term of 37 years for the murder on Tuesday.
Ka’mani Brightly-Donaldson, 25, of Romford, Jeffrey Gyimah, 23, and Joao Pateco-Te, 28, both of Hackney, were found guilty of murder, conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to possess a firearm or firearms with intent to endanger life.
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All four defendants had admitted to having links with the E9 or linked Holly Street gangs and had previous convictions.
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Brightly-Donaldson was jailed for life with a minimum term of 38 years; Gyimah was handed a minimum term of 35 years; and Pateco-Te was told he would spend at least 37 years behind bars.
Brightly-Donaldson was also convicted of having a prohibited firearm.
Judge Lynn Tayton KC called the killing a “planned revenge attack arising out of gang rivalry in the context of an ongoing pattern of serious tit-for-tat violence”.
Mr Boothe’s older brother Kyle Boothe survived being shot with the same gun in August 2020.
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Prosecutor Anthony Orchard KC said Henry-Richards’ video “goaded London Fields Gang, one of the E9/Holly Street Gang enemies, and glorified the murder of Kacey Boothe”.
“The track contained specific information about the circumstances in which Kacey Boothe had been killed that were not in the public domain.”
The judge admitted that Mr Boothe was targeted because of his links to the city’s gang culture, but he “was first and foremost a young man with his life ahead of him who leaves behind a mother, partner, and children”.
Mr Boothe’s mother, Marcia Rowe, said in an impact statement that there was “no limit to the endless suffering we all feel and must live with every day”.
