On October 16th, 2000, twenty-one-year-old Raymond Isaacs was eating in a café in Hounslow, Middlesex, England with his girlfriend, their child, and two of his friends. At one point during the meal, Raymond and one of his friends went outside to use a public phone box.
At this point, it appeared that an individual outside the café began staring at Raymond, and some kind of confrontation commenced, though it’s not clear who instigated it. The staring man picked up a large piece of a wood fence that had been lying nearby and swung it at Raymond. A melee ensued, and at some stage, the first attacker reportedly called several other people on his cell phone who all came down to the fight with various weapons.
At the height of the assault, an estimated eleven people were attacking Raymond. Raymond’s friend managed to make his way back into the café, and Raymond himself even escaped momentarily, running down the street a short distance. His assailants caught up with him outside a Nando’s restaurant, however, and proceeded to punch, kick, and stab him repeatedly.
The savage attack only lasted about fifteen seconds before the perpetrators fled the scene. Raymond’s girlfriend came outside to find him crumpled on the pavement, bloody and beaten senseless.
He was immediately transported to Middlesex University Hospital but died of his injuries only ninety minutes after arriving. The exact cause of death was a stab wound to the heart, though he had also been stabbed in the leg and battered mercilessly all over his body.
In February of 2001, five people were taken into custody in connection with the murder, including a twenty-six-year-old married father of one named Henry Anthony Buchanan and his brother Gary Fairbrother. Two other men named Fabien Roberts and Warren Allen were also arrested, as was a seventeen-year-old who remained unnamed because he was a minor.
Eventually, some of the suspects were found guilty of charges relating to the crime, but none were actually convicted of Raymond Isaacs’s slaying, leaving the homicide officially unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 