source: 4WardEverUK Writers

published: 12 January 2024

Image Credit: Valeria Boltneva at www.Pexels.com

From all of our hundreds of Remembrance Calendar entries, we particularly feature certain cases that were of notable historical significance.

Colin Roach

Colin Roach, aged 21 years, died in January 1983 after receiving a fatal gunshot wound in 1983 while he was in the custody of Stoke Newington police station, London.

He is alleged by the police to have shot himself in the mouth.

Authorities alleged that he had committed suicide after entering the Stoke Newington Police Station. Many believed that there was reason to doubt this story and instead argued that Roach was murdered by police.

Benjamin Zephaniah's poem about Colin Roach who died of a gunshot inside Stoke Newington police station on 12th January 1983.

The police surgeon who was called to Roach's corpse in the foyer of the police station said that the body position was inconsistent with suicide. The shotgun with which he was killed could not be fitted into the sports bag Roach had with him, not even when broken down.

No fibres from the bag were found on the gun and no oil from the gun was found in the bag. When a shotgun is used for suicide the recoil damages and sometimes breaks the trigger thumb. No injury was found to Roach's hand at all. The recoiling gun will normally hit a wall or floor very hard but no marks from this were found in the police station foyer or on the gun butt.

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Benjamin Zephaniah on how Colin Roach’s death inside Stoke Newington Police Station sparked a movement 35 years ago

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Zephaniah Remembers Colin Roach pdf

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Today in London policing history, 1983: Colin Roach dies in Stoke Newington Police Station

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