Less than a week has passed since 15-year-old Rene Graham was shot in the midst of a family fun day in west London.

A red bandana, left with a bunch of now-dead flowers and a handful of extinguished tea lights, still remain as tributes to the murdered schoolboy, in this area of the capital where some of Britain’s richest residents live cheek-by-jowl with some of its poorest.

It was last Sunday when Rene attended an annual pre-Notting Hill Carnival event promoted by the Caribbean Music Association, just a stone’s throw from multi-million pound homes in Notting Hill.

Flyers for the event promised family games and face painting in a park named after Liberal politician and philanthropist Emslie Horniman, who donated the land to the public more than a century ago. It is known by locals as Teletubbies Park because of its brightly-coloured children’s playground.

But at around 7.20pm, as the event was drawing to a close, a sudden burst of gunfire sent parents with young children, some of them strapped in buggies, running for cover. Moments later, Rene was on the floor dying from his wounds.

Rene Graham, 15, was shot in the midst of a family fun day in west London on Sunday

A red bandana, left with a bunch of now-dead flowers and a handful of extinguished tea lights  outside the park

A young Rene. His mother, who gave birth to another son in November last year, is in shock and still ‘trying to process’ what has happened to the precious boy she referred to as ‘my big man’

Within a couple of days, police had released his name and photograph.

But so too had someone affiliated to the notorious Harrow Road Boys gang, which is based on the council-owned Mozart Estate near Maida Vale, where Rene lived.

Apparently claiming Rene as one of their own, a photograph posted on social media showed the young teenager, hood pulled up, making a ‘finger gun’ hand gesture towards the camera.

Another, in which Rene appears to be holding a cannabis joint in his hand, is captioned ‘RIP Rio’ — one of Rene’s nicknames — and the words: ‘From the trips we took 2 to the licks we hit… love you for life n after bro’. Hitting a lick is gang slang for stealing or getting money by illegal means.

Such images are a stark contrast to those on family social media pages showing Rene, aged one, dressed in a miniature Santa outfit for his first Christmas, or as a little boy sharing cuddles with his mother and grandmother.

A relative told the Mail that Rene’s family were still too devastated to speak of his death. His mother, who gave birth to another son in November last year, is in shock and still ‘trying to process’ what has happened to the precious boy she referred to as ‘my big man’.

But as a family friend put it to me this week: ‘How does a child go from a smiling little boy to being caught up in a gang war? This is not just a story about a 15-year-old being shot dead. This was a child who got drawn into gang culture and nobody was able to stop it happening.’

For while police have arrested — and bailed — four men pending further inquiries, there is a devastating sense of deja vu about Rene’s death, not to mention fears that it is only a matter of time before another occurs.

His name has become one of many listed by gang members in ‘RIP’ social media ‘rolls of honour’ filled with gun, machete and coffin emojis and talk of retaliation.

And it is surely no accident that the red bandana — which is associated with members of the Harrow Road Boys — has been attached to railings at one end of a footbridge crossing the Grand Union Canal.

As those who live here know all too well, the bridge marks the boundary between two areas which are controlled by rival groups — the Harrow Road Boys and Ladbroke Grove Boys — involved a long-running turf and drug war.

‘Over the water’ is the phrase gang members use to refer to each other’s territory, as if those living on the other side of the canal come from another country, rather than just half a mile away.

To get to the event Rene had crossed from north of the canal — where he lived — to the south.

A photograph posted on social media showed the young teenager, hood pulled up, making a ‘finger gun’ hand gesture towards the camera

A family member posted a picture of Rene, aged one, dressed in a miniature Santa outfit for his first Christmas on social media

The Grand Union Canal Bridge marks the boundary between two areas which are controlled by rival groups – the Harrow Road Boys and Ladbroke Grove Boys  involved a long-running turf and drug war

Marvin William Bailey, aka Fredo, is a musician who was raised on the Mozart Estate and a notorious figurehead for the Harrow Road Boys

Was simply crossing a footbridge the reason a schoolboy lost his life?

Investigations into his death are ongoing, but the Reverend Sam Cross, vicar of St Thomas’s Church, which borders the park where Rene died, told the Mail: ‘There’s a general sense of shock after the shooting but also a sense of ‘what do we do now?’

‘I know parents are keeping their children closer because there is that worry that kids are getting groomed and recruited into gangs.’

The danger time, says Rev Cross, are the ‘lost hours’ after school, when kids roam the street with nothing to do.

‘That’s when a lot of kids are targeted,’ he says. ‘Economic disparities come into play as the kids who are more vulnerable are the ones whose parents are perhaps working multiple jobs and aren’t able to pick them up.’

Locals prepared to speak are tired of repeatedly expressing the same fears and the same warnings.

More children, they say, will inevitably be recruited into gangs who deal in drugs and guard their territories with threats of violence. Boys, desperate for a sense of identity and belonging, are ripe for grooming by older gang members even before they have hit their teens.

As one source put it to the Mail this week: ‘These are families where fathers are often absent, where there are no role models for young men and where they aren’t allowed or able to simply enjoy being children.’

One common grooming technique used by older gang members is to buy the younger boys — often left hungry thanks to a chaotic home life — food such as fried chicken, fizzy drinks and sweets.

The youngsters are left with a misguided feeling of being cared for, even loved, and a sense of gratitude to the older boys, many of whom have access to designer clothes, watches, vapes and drugs thanks to their own illegal dealing.

One mother told the Mail this week: ‘It’s frightening for everyone when something like this happens but my main worry is for the kids in the area.

‘You worry firstly that your kids will get harmed because if people are shooting in a park in a crowd, someone could get in the way by accident.

Tributes to the murdered schoolboy were left in an area of the capital where some of Britain’s richest residents live cheek-by-jowl with some of its poorest

Police have arrested – and bailed – four men pending further inquiries

Forensic officers and detectives revisit the scene the following day to piece together the events that led to the fatal shooting

‘But also, you worry about these normal kids who might get involved in something without realising what it really entails.’

Another resident, who has lived in the Ladbroke Grove area for 42 years, said the young age of the children involved in such gangs is ‘deeply upsetting’.

‘They’re just kids,’ he said.

But hairdresser Rose Feliciano, who runs a salon close to the spot where Rene was killed, says that police are unable to deal with the mobs who maraud through the area, sometimes targeting shops where they break windows or steal alcohol, vapes and money.

‘We don’t call them anymore because the officers tell us they just get released because they’re underage,’ she said.

Gang rivalries in this troubled corner of London stretch back decades, with roots lying in the origins of both the Mozart Estate and the Kensal New Town Estate.

The former, completed in 1974, is a maze of 737 houses and flats in 25 medium-rise blocks linked by overhead walkways.

It won a design award for Westminster City Council but within a matter of years was being referred to as a sink estate and, later, as ‘Crack City’.

Kensal New Town Estate, meanwhile, sprang up in the 1960s and 70s following slum clearance which began in the 1930s. Made up of around 700 flats and houses, it was also soon dogged by a range of social problems.

Both estates have become known as dumping grounds for poor, often single-parent families. While the Harrow Road Boys claim the Mozart Estate as their patch, Kensal New Town has the Ladbroke Grove Boys.

Locals have lost count of the deaths of young teenagers and boys from both estates, once largely as a result of knife wounds but increasingly from gun crime.

The 1990s saw a steady rise in tit-for-tat stabbings and shootings amid rising social tensions and the emergence of a complex web of alliances between gangs on different London estates

By the mid-2000s, the influence of U.S. gang culture was rife throughout the capital. The Harrow Road Boys and Ladbroke Grove Boys gangs took inspiration from such groups, choosing the colours red and blue, worn as bandanas, to indicate their allegiance.

Over the years, many of those caught up in their relentless violence have been innocent bystanders.

Members of the public visit the scene of the tragedy in Kensington and leave tributes 

In 2008, 14-year-old Amro Elbadawi was killed by a single knife wound to the throat on the Mozart Estate

In May 2010, in a case of mistaken identity, 22-year-old electrician Daniel Omari Smith was shot in the back and killed as he left a fast food restaurant on Harrow Road

In 2008, 14-year-old Amro Elbadawi was killed by a single knife wound to the throat on the Mozart Estate. His father, who denied Amro was in a gang, said his family back in Egypt couldn’t believe such a thing could happen in London.

In May 2010, in a case of mistaken identity, 22-year-old electrician Daniel Omari Smith was shot in the back and killed as he left a fast food restaurant on nearby Harrow Road. His mother Winnie later set up a trust in her son’s name, offering financial support to encourage students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

In 2011, three teenage girls, one of them holding her baby son, were shot and injured on the Mozart Estate by a group of men in hoodies on bikes who fled the scene. No arrests were made in relation to what the police said was a ‘gang-related shooting’. The girls were hit while the original targets were fleeing the scene.

At the time, resident Jenny Kantinda, who knew the victims, told the BBC: ‘We’ve had enough. The gang trouble has got worse. It’s time police did something to help us. There are young children living here. Are they safe? I don’t think so.’

She might just as easily have been talking about the shooting of Rene Graham. In 2011 he was two, then a sweet toddler photographed in the arms of his mother and grandmother whose family origins lie in the Caribbean island of Dominica where some of Rene’s great uncles still live.

There is a feeling of hopelessness in the area. With police faced by a cultural wall of silence, many of these crimes remain unsolved.

But a landmark trial in 2022 saw three Harrow Road Boys jailed for life following the murder of one of their own associates, after initiating the shoot-out during which he lost his life.

Billy McCullagh, 27, known as Billy da Kid, was gunned down in a hail of bullets by gang rivals when his own side’s revenge attack for a stabbing the day before, ended in ‘crushing defeat’.

The person who fired the fatal shots was never identified, leading prosecutors to charge members of his own side with his murder. They successfully argued in court that the three men were just as responsible as the shooters for his death because they set out to cause serious violence.

McCullagh’s death had been memorialised in an online music video described in court as a ‘brazen and provocative celebration of his gang lifestyle’.

Indeed, the flagrant glorification of gang violence by popular rappers is one of the most problematic aspects of the warring in the capital.

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The rival gangs vying for control of Ladbroke Grove

Marvin William Bailey, aka Fredo, is a musician who was raised on the Mozart Estate and a notorious figurehead for the Harrow Road Boys.

Despite rapping about gang rivalries, drugs and money, he had a UK No.1 single in 2018 and has appeared at mainstream music festivals including those held annually in Reading and Leeds.

Said to have made more than £1 million from his music, he has spent time in jail in the UK for firearms offences, and is banned from Mozart Estate by Westminster Council’s anti-social behaviour team.

He has been accused by prosecutors at Kingston Crown Court of conspiring with eight co-defendants to buy guns to shoot a rival rapper, Digga D, a key figure in the Ladbroke Grove gang.

Digga D, meanwhile, is in jail after admitting the importation and supply of cannabis.

The situation, then, is not just complex but a bleak one for families living on both sides of the Grand Union Canal.

Rev Sam Cross argues that there has been ‘a lack of investment in young people… that leads to kids around here feeling left behind.’

He adds: ‘They feel like they’re not thought about or, if they are, that it’s not positive or it’s an afterthought. I think some of those older teenagers in gangs offer some sort of affirmation, even if it’s of the wrong sort.’

He says that what is needed is more ‘youth provision, opportunities for mentoring and role models. These will be the things parents are looking for as they enter summer holidays and are looking for ways to keep their kids safe and out of trouble.’

With fears of revenge attacks, there are already calls for next month’s Notting Hill Carnival to be cancelled in light of Rene’s death.

The Harrow Road Boys have their own sinister warning about the weeks stretching ahead.

Just a couple of days after Rene’s death, one of their members posted footage of an air ambulance hovering over the Mozart Estate along with a caption.

‘Going to be a hot summer lads,’ he wrote.