“I’m going to die. Tell my mom I love her.”
These were the dying words of 21-year-old Bailey Atkinson to a police officer as he lay in Walsall town centre having been brutally attacked with blades and machetes in January last year.
In spite of open-heart surgery at the scene, Bailey died from multiple stabs wounds to his back, arms and legs.
Bailey had moved to Walsall from Coventry two years previously to escape a gang life style, but sadly became embroiled in Walsall’s own warring groups.
On the evening of 27 January, Bailey was out with a female friend. A taxi dropped them in Walsall town centre and they were walking past the market stalls when a car swerved towards them.
Bailey told his friend to “run” as he also ran along the High Street.
There were two cars in convoy, a Toyota Verso and a Seat Leon, both had been stolen in previous days.
The nine occupants of both vehicles had met up on a supermarket car park shortly before they drove into the town centre looking for Bailey. It’s thought they sought him in retaliation for an attack on a brother of one of their number by Bailey two months previously.
They cornered Bailey and by Lower Hall Lane and drove at him.
Bailey managed to escape, but the cars circled and caught up with him further along the High Street where six of the occupants got out and attacked Bailey with machetes and zombie knives. Bailey didn’t stand a chance.
His attackers got back in the cars leaving him on the floor, one even stopped to try to take a photo of Bailey on his mobile phone, as he lay bleeding on the floor.
All occupants of the cars made off to Slater Street in Wolverhampton where the cars were found burnt out just minutes after the killing.
Police were at Bailey’s side in less than five minutes and began CPR, but sadly he was pronounced dead at hospital a short time later.
Detectives launched a meticulous investigation, examining hours of CCTV and mobile phone evidence, plotting each of the defendants’ movements to establish their part in Bailey’s murder.
And today (21 March) after a ten-week trial at Nottingham Crown Court, seven teenagers, who were aged between 15 and 18 at the time of the attack, have been found guilty of Bailey’s murder.
