The Metropolitan police are conducting a “vast and complex” investigation into the deaths of two people after a crush at a south London music venue last month, which will probably result in criminal charges, an inquest heard on Friday.
Speaking at the opening of the inquest at London Inner South coroner’s court into the deaths of Rebecca Ikumelo, 33, and Gaby Hutchinson, 23, DCI Nigel Penney, the Met’s senior investigating officer in the case, told the court: “It’s a vast and complicated process. It’s a huge investigation.”
He said police were tracking and tracing witnesses and were watching hundreds of hours of CCTV footage to work out how the crush occurred. “There are a lot of lines of inquiry to establish the facts and get to the truth,” he said.
Ikumelo had gone to watch the Nigerian Afrobeats star Asake perform at the O2 Academy Brixton on 15 December last year when she was caught up in a crush outside the venue, where Hutchinson was a security guard.
The senior coroner, Andrew Harris, asked if there could be homicide or related charges in connection with the two deaths.
Penney replied there was a “strong possibility of criminal charges” at a future point in the investigation. He requested permission for the inquest to be suspended while the criminal investigation is carried out.
Granting permission, Harris said: “It seems to me that if this is a complex criminal investigation, this matter is going to take some years.”
Dozens of Ikumelo’s family and friends attended the hearing. In their first media interview, the family called for justice for Ikumelo.
Her younger brother Anthony Ikumelo, 30, said: “We want answers, we want to know what happened and we want accountability.”
Ikumelo, a mother of two boys aged seven and four, the older one who is autistic, regularly posted on TikTok, where she had 16,000 followers, about parenting an autistic child.
Her mother, Yetunde Olodo, 59, said: “She was an amazing mum. Her children were her life, 100%,. The little one keeps asking: ‘Where has mummy gone? When is she coming back?’ They don’t understand what’s going on.”
Olodo said: “We will try our best to make sure her children have a good life. She was a shining light and she really cared for her community.”
She added: “As a parent I never imagined I would ever be mourning the loss of a child. I am hurting and my family is hurting too. When Rebecca died I lost a daughter, a best friend and my confidante. I am just so sad that her two boys will grow up in this world without having their mother there. Nothing can fill the void that Rebecca’s death has left in our family but it is important that we get justice for her death.”
Anthony Ikumelo said the family became worried when Rebecca did not arrive home when expected, something he said was out of character for her because she was always on time to get back to her children
“She was a great sibling,” he said. “She taught me how to read and write when I was small. She was always trying to help people.”
Interested parties in the case are AP Security and Academy Music Group. The inquest heard that the Health and Safety Executive had declined to participate in the investigation and that the Met, the lead agency in the investigation, was in consultation with Lambeth environmental health officials.
Family and friends gathered for a vigil in Ikumelo’s memory on 14 January close to her home in Newham, east London, and set off balloons to mark her untimely death.
Family have urged anyone with information about what happened on the night Ikumelo died to contact them on Twitter at J4R_Ikumelo
Cyrilia Davies Knight, of Saunders Law, which is representing Olodo and other family members, said: “Today is the start of my client’s quest for justice. She knows that this journey will be a long and difficult one but she is determined to find out what happened to her daughter and for those responsible to be held accountable. She hopes that the police will do a robust and thorough investigation.”
