Murder of Jimmy Mizen

Jimmy Mizen
Jimmy Mizen school photo
Born	9 May 1992 Lewisham, London, England
Died	10 May 2008 (aged 16) Lee, London, England
Cause of death	Exsanguination (blood loss)
Resting place	Grove Park Cemetery
Nationality	English
Parent(s)	Margaret Mizen MBE and Barry Mizen MBE
Website	The Mizen Foundation

Jimmy Mizen (9 May 1992 - 10 May 2008) was a 16-year-old schoolboy who was murdered in Lee, London. A 19-year-old youth, Jake Fahri, was convicted in March 2009 of his murder.

Background

Mizen was the sixth son and the eighth of nine children of Barry Colin Mizen, MBE and Margaret Annette (née Everson) Mizen, MBE. Mizen, who turned 16 years old the day before, was 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm) tall and 14 stone (89 kg). He lived in Lee Green and attended St Thomas More Catholic Comprehensive School in Eltham.

Jake Fahri had a string of convictions involving robbery and violence. On 19 July 2004, he was given a nine-month referral order for taking part in a gang knife-point robbery of a schoolboy at Falconwood railway station in Bexley, Greater London. On 4 January 2005, he was given a twelve-month supervision order for the robbery of an adult in Greenwich Park on 13 April 2004. On 13 April 2006, he was given an eighteen-month supervision order for an unprovoked assault on a girl in the street and burglary.

The Mizen family had had previous dealings with Jake Fahri. In 2001, he walked up to Jimmy Mizen's brother, Harry, in the street and asked for money before punching him in the stomach. Harry, who was 10 years old, handed over 20p but told his mother about the incident and she made a complaint to Fahri's school. Two years later, on 1 April 2003, Fahri saw Harry in Woodyates Road, Lee, and demanded to know why he had 'grassed'. Harry tried to escape but Fahri grabbed hold of his shirt and threatened to beat him up before punching him in the chest. Police visited Fahri's home on 7 May 2003 to speak to him about the incident and gave him a harassment warning. The culmination of these events was the incident in which Jimmy was murdered.

Murder

At approximately 11:30 on the morning of 10 May 2008, a day after his sixteenth birthday, Mizen was inside the Three Cooks Bakery in Burnt Ash Hill, south London, with his brother, Harry. Jake Fahri, 19, of Lee, entered the shop and an altercation began when Jimmy stood up to threats being made against him by Fahri.

5 feet 7 inches (170 cm) Fahri challenged 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm) Mizen to go outside which he refused. Not wanting to lose face after picking a fight with Mizen, Fahri went back into the shop and hit him with two plastic drink bottles. The Mizen brothers defended themselves and traded punches with Fahri before all three crashed into a glass cake display and Fahri was bundled out of the shop.

Fahri then re-entered the shop with a metal-framed advertising sign and started poking Mizen with it. Mizen held onto the sign and Fahri reached for a 12-inch (30 cm) hot glass dish from the counter and threw it at Mizen. Shattering on his chin, a one-and-a-half-inch glass shard pierced his neck and severed vital blood vessels. According to witnesses, Fahri exited the bakery with a triumphant grin on his face.

Mizen staggered to the rear of the bakery and into a cupboard to shield himself from the possibility of Fahri returning, where his elder brother, Tommy, who was 27 at the time, found him. Mizen collapsed in his brother's arms and was so afraid of the attack that when his brother tried to open the cupboard door, he held it close thinking that it was Fahri. Their mother, Margaret, arrived soon after and fainted at the sight of her son. When she regained consciousness, she called her husband, Barry, who arrived an hour later to find that his son had died.

Arrest, investigation and trial

Fahri handed himself into police custody three days after the attack. In police recordings of his interviews, Fahri commented: "Someone has died because of me. I didn't mean it, I didn't mean to kill him." Fahri was remanded in custody and stood trial at the Central Criminal Court on 11 March 2009 for the murder of Jimmy Mizen before Mr Justice Calvert-Smith and a jury. At his trial, Fahri admitted to throwing the glass dish but denied murder.

Crispin Aylett QC, prosecuting, said: "A trivial incident, brought about by the defendant's rudeness, escalated into something horrific. The defendant reached for any and every available weapon with which to attack the Mizen brothers. The whole incident lasted no more than three minutes – three minutes of absolute madness on the part of this defendant."

Pathologist Benjamin Swift told the court that Mizen died from blood loss. A glass shard had severed the carotid artery and jugular veins which were both 0.4in (1 cm) below the skin near the jaw.

The jury rejected Fahri's version of events and found him guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of fourteen years.

On 2 November 2009, Fahri was stabbed by Sean Mercer, the murderer of Rhys Jones, in prison. Fahri was taken to hospital and survived the attack.

The Mizen Foundation

In 2009, the Mizen family set up The Jimmy Mizen Foundation charity (now called For Jimmy) based in Lee Green. The charity works with schools across the United Kingdom where Margaret and Barry share Mizen's story and help young people to make their local communities safer so that they may feel safe when walking home. Margaret, Barry and their eldest son, Danny, travelled to Kenya with CAFOD to take the charity message out there. In 2011, Mizen's brothers, Bobby, Tommy, and Harry, his sister, Joanne, and his nephew, James, travelled to Nepal with scouts and friends to trek around the Annapurna Circuit in his memory. His youngest brother George also did this trek with a local scout group in March 2016.

In 2010, The Tablet named the Mizen family as among Britain’s most influential Roman Catholics. Mizen's parents, Barry and Margaret, were both appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to young people in London.

On 26 July 2020, Barry and Margaret announced via Facebook that they were stepping away from the charity that they had founded, 'For Jimmy', and had set up a new charity called 'The Mizen Foundation'. In the statement, they explained that they and the trustees of their former charity had differences in the direction that they wanted the charity to go and were left with no choice but to step down.

External links

• The Mizen Foundation
• Prince Charles listens to Lewisham youth at Jimmy Mizen cafe