On the night of April 21st, 2001, Lower Clapton Road in East London—already earning its grim nickname as “Murder Mile” due to a spate of gang-related shootings—became the scene of yet another tragic double homicide. Twenty-year-old Corey Wright and his nineteen-year-old friend Wayne Henry were gunned down in a hail of bullets shortly after leaving the Chimes nightclub at 231 Lower Clapton Road.
The pair had been in a blue BMW convertible. Masked gunmen approached the vehicle as it pulled away from the club. Multiple shots were fired into the car. Corey, a passenger, was shot in the back of the head. Wayne, the driver, was also fatally wounded. The car then careered out of control, striking three women pedestrians before crashing into a night bus near Thistlethwaite Road. Both young men died at the scene.
The shooting occurred amid escalating tensions between rival groups in North and East London, particularly involving factions from Hackney and Tottenham. Lower Clapton Road had already seen several fatal incidents in the late 1990s and early 2000s, part of a wave of gun violence linked to drug dealing, territorial disputes, and gang rivalries.
Corey Wright, from Enfield, had a prior conviction. Along with five other youths, he had been found guilty of conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm in connection with the 1997 killing of sixteen-year-old Kingsley Iyasara on the Carlton Lodge Estate in Finsbury Park. Iyasara had been beaten and shot in what was described as a revenge attack. Corey’s mother, Janet, maintained that her son was not directly involved in the fatal violence and had grown up with the group since nursery school, viewing them more as childhood friends than a formal gang.
Wayne Henry was from Hackney. Reports from the time noted that both young men had turned away from education and conventional employment toward lives entangled in street crime, a pattern their families had watched with concern.
Despite the public nature of the attack outside a nightclub, no one has ever been charged with the murders. The case remains unsolved more than two decades later. Police investigations at the time linked it to ongoing gang feuds, but concrete evidence to secure convictions proved elusive.
Chimes nightclub itself had previously been the site of other shootings, including the 1997 killing of sixteen-year-old Guydance Dacres inside the venue and the 2000 murder of Antony Rose-Windon just outside.
In 2018, on the seventeenth anniversary, Janet Wright (Corey’s mother) organized a vigil in London Fields and launched the group “Mothers With A Voice” to support other bereaved parents and address youth violence.
Crime Immemorial 