Courtney Ellis has been convicted of a gang murder in north-west London following a retrial. The case has once again emphasized the role of YouTube videos in fueling tensions between rival groups in the area. Ellis was found guilty of the murder of Craig Small, who was shot and killed outside a chicken shop near London’s Wembley Stadium on July 5, 2019.
The tensions between the two gangs in north-west London were stoked by claims and counter-claims spread on YouTube. The Church Road Soldiers from the Church End estate in Willesden have been in conflict with a gang from Wembley’s Stonebridge estate, also known as The Usual Suspects, for over a decade.
Nines, a rapper and grime artist whose real name is Courtney Freckleton, was a key figure in the Church Road Soldiers. The rival rappers Nines and K-Koke exchanged insults in videos on YouTube in the spring and summer of 2019.
Nines was chased in his car by members of the Stonebridge gang on June 1, 2019. He crashed the car and was stabbed but survived, and a video of the incident was uploaded onto YouTube. A month later, Stonebridge gang member Craig Small was shot dead as he waited for his food outside a fried chicken takeaway.
The tensions escalated further as Stonebridge gang member Mr. Small was killed. In the aftermath, the Stonebridge gang attempted to kill another member of the gang. Nines himself was later jailed for smuggling cannabis and was involved in controversy around detainment at Heathrow airport. Controversial videos on YouTube have also led to criminal behavior in the past, and Meg Hillier had previously called for some of this content to be removed from the platform. Although YouTube has policies in place against harmful content, much of the content featuring the gangs has not been removed.