Kelyan Bokassa murder: Teens admit stabbing 14-year-old 27 times with machete on bus

Two teenagers have admitted murdering a 14-year-old schoolboy on a bus by brutally him 27 times in a machete attack.

Kelyan Bokassa, an aspiring , was hacked to death as he travelled home on January 7. Emergency services rushed to the scene to desperately try and save the teenager but he sustained a severed femoral artery and died shortly after medics arrived. In an unusual move, had issued CCTV images and the names of two other teenagers in connection to the brutal stabbing - and two boys, both aged 16, pleaded guilty to Kelyan's murder.

The pair appeared at the Old Bailey on Friday for a plea hearing and they also pleaded guilty having a knife on Woolwich Church Street.

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Relatives of Kelyan gasped and appeared tearful as they sat metres away from the dock where the two boys sat flanked by officers.

Reporting of the case was briefly delayed after one of the boys' barristers had called for time to speak to his client in light of what had appeared to be an unexpected plea. Later, the teen returned to court and confirmed his guilty plea.

Kelyan was fatally stabbed while on a route 472 bus in Woolwich, south-east London. At an earlier hearing, prosecutor Tom Little KC said the victim was sitting on the back seat of the bus on the upper deck when he was attacked by two youths both armed with "lengthy machetes".

The 16-year-olds knew in advance that Kelyan would be on the bus when they boarded and walked directly towards him, the court was told. Mr Little said: "It is clear this is not a form of spontaneous incident. The two defendants must have known the deceased was on the bus.

"They approach him and almost instantaneously, the two of them pull out machetes and attacked the deceased. He is stabbed or attempted to be stabbed on a total of 27 occasions before the defendants made their way off the bus."

One of these machetes was thrown away in the River Thames but it was later recovered by police.

Both defendants remained at large for a few days before being arrested and both had previous convictions, including for having a knife in a public place.

One of them had a referral order in place at the time of the murder. The defendants cannot be named because of their ages. However, Judge Lucraft indicated he would hear a media application to lift the reporting restriction at their sentencing hearing.

Kelyan was tragically the first teenager to be killed by knife crime in London in 2025.