Culture Clash

Julie Sheriff, 16, suffered severe head injuries after a row with a girl in Clapham. She spent four months in a coma and had shown signs of recovery but her condition deteriorated and she died last Wednesday.

Her father, Raouf, who brought her to Britain in 2006 from Sierra Leone, where he was a policeman, said Julie had fallen out with a group of friends in a row over a £5 note and a bus pass in the months before she was attacked in May - and blames them for her death.

And although Sierra Leone has had a recent civil war, things are improving and this sort of senseless savagery must have come as a bit of a shock…

Mr Sheriff, who lives in Hackney, claimed Julie had been hounded since January by the group.

Detectives are understood to be investigating the theory that the row in Falcon Road was not connected with them.

? Either that’s a clumsy bit of writing or the ‘Evening Standard’ thinks the police aren’t seeing any link here.

According to Wikipedia, the key mission of the Sierra Leone Police Force is ’… to prevent crime, to protect life and property, to detect and prosecute offenders, to maintain public order, to ensure safety and security, to enhance access to justice.’ So Mr Sheriff must have expected the same thing from the UK police.

Holding back the tears he told how he had called police to his flat when the girls turned up one evening.

He said: "The girls had been at the flat two days before and my daughter's £5 note had gone missing, while one of them said they had lost a bus pass. It escalated and I asked them to leave.

"Then they turned up throwing stones and threatening my daughter. I called the police and they spoke to my daughter who was crying in her bedroom.

"The girls had told her they would attack her at school, but the police refused to do anything as there was no CCTV on the estate."

Which must have come as a bit of a surprise to Mr Sheriff, who probably never saw CCTV in his entire career, let alone regarded it as essential to policing…

Mr Sheriff, who has another daughter Favour, three, asked the Independent Police Complaints Authority to look into the case. He said: "Julie was so good natured, and trusting. We came here for a better life but we had no protection from the police."

Welcome to Britain, Mr Sheriff...