Chris Kaba was a ‘core member’ in the notorious ’67’ South London gang and a drill rapper who bragged on camera about knifing rivals, MailOnline can reveal today.
The 67, once championed by Tim Westwood and even nominated for a Music of Black Origin (Mobo) Award, are linked to shootings, stabbings and murders – as well as blackmail, extortion and running county lines drugs networks across the Home Counties.
Kaba’s own violent criminal career began when he was 13 when he turned up to a street fight wielding a large kitchen knife – but jurors in Met Police marksman Martyn Blake’s murder trial were told Chris was an expectant father working in the building trade.
Kaba graduated from knife crime to gun crime as he got older – but was later stabbed himself at his own 19th birthday party when rivals to his Brixton Hill gang launched an attack where two of his friends were shot as part of a bloody turf war.
He survived knife wounds to the stomach but refused to co-operate with police trying to find the perpetrators.
And he himself was the gunman in a meticulously organised hit on a rival in a packed nightclub just a week before he was shot by a Met marksman in September 2022, it emerged today.
Chris Kaba in a drill rap video where he appears to pretend to fire a gun
Chris Kaba’s rap name was ‘Mad Itch’ or ‘Itch’ and he released drill rap songs bragging about gunning down rivals and selling drugs. A still from one of his videos is pictured above, for the song Numerous Times, where he bragged about stabbing a rival
Kaba was a member of The 67, championed by Tim Westwood (pictured) and even nominated for a Music of Black Origin (Mobo) Award in 2016
Kaba had six convictions before he died – the first coming when he was in year 8 or 9 in school – and he had served prison sentences, including for firearms offences and possessing knives.
But his criminal past was only revealed after an Old Bailey judge rejected a plea from his family to keep it secret in the wake of the acquittal of Met Police marksman Martyn Blake, who was cleared of his murder in just three hours on Tuesday.
Former Met detective Peter Bleksley said today that Kaba was ‘a career criminal’ and ‘a career gangster’ with the ‘notorious’ 67 gang.
‘I’m so delighted that today the truth about Chris Kaba can finally be told’, he told The Sun.
Kaba, who died aged 23, has been unmasked as a feared and ‘core member’ of the most dangerous street gang in South London.
Scotland Yard believe his violent offending continued until just days before his death where he shot the member of rival gang – first in a Bethnal Green nightclub and again after chasing him down the street outside.
In a shocking attack captured on CCTV, the gangster started firing at Brandon Malutshi, chasing him outside the Oval Space Club, with one of the bullets hitting him in the leg.
Had he not been killed, Mr Kaba would have stood trial at the Old Bailey for the attempted murder of Mr Malutshi who miraculously survived the nightclub shooting on August 30, 2022.
His accomplices were later convicted for their role in the shooting during a trial where reporting was restricted to avoid any prejudge to jurors in the Blake case.
CCTV footage showed Mr Kaba spotting his rival at the club before grabbing a bag from a friend, pulling on a single black glove then covering his face.
He then snatched the pistol from the bag and fired across the dancefloor at Malutshi, who sprinted away. Mr Kaba chased him and fired a volley of bullets at his target, hitting him in the leg just below the buttock.
Mr Malutshi, a member of the ’17’ gang considered The 67’s main rivals, was flown by air ambulance to the Royal London Hospital and survived the shooting, eventually discharging himself against medical advice with a small bullet fragment still in his right leg.
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Just six days before his death, Mr Kaba (in blue) brazenly gunned down a rival in the middle of a crowded nightclub during a bloody feud for control of a profitable county lines drug network
Mr Kaba (marked in blue) chased the victim outside the nightclub, shooting him again
Mr Kaba’s associates, Shemiah Bell and Marcus Pottinger, both 31, were found guilty of wounding with intent in February while Connel Bamgboye, 29, was convicted of possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence.
But it was Mr Kaba who had pulled the trigger as part of a vicious war for control over a ‘county lines’ drug dealing network which raged between the two gangs.
It has also emerged that the blue Audi Q8 driven by Kaba on the night he died on September 5 2022 had been flagged to police as being involved in a shooting in Bromley four months earlier where two men were again shot in the legs with a shotgun collected in the £75,000 luxury 4×4.
It was also reportedly spotted at the scene of a shooting in Brixton on September 4, 2022, where a man was seen stuffing a shotgun into his trousers.
The 23-year-old was a father-to-be rapper and much-loved son – and his death has caused huge anger in the capital’s black communities with stars including Stormzy supporting his families’ battle for justice.
West Ham and England defender Aaron Wan-Bissaka, 26, has donated at least £20,000 to online fundraiser in memory of Chris, who went to the same school as him in Croydon.
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn attended one of the Justice for Chris Kaba rallies in 2022 – pictured close to Parliament with his fist aloft – but the now-independent MP has not yet commented on Sgt Blake’s acquittal.
One of the group’s highest profile rappers is Cassie Wuta-Ofei, better known as LD or Scribz, who famously wears a silver mask after police tried to ban him from YouTube
Cassiel Wuta-Ofei (left), known by his stage name, Scribz, and Malki Martin (right), who goes by ASAP, were sentenced to a total of nine years behind bars for operating a drugs network that shipped heroin and crack cocaine to the Home Counties
The pair, part of rap group 67, which was nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2016 MOBO award, were stopped while driving a Mercedes A Class in Basingstoke, Hampshire
British rapper, singer and songwriter Stormzy speaks during Black Lives Matter protesters march from Parliament Square to New Scotland Yard in central London demanding justice for Chris Kaba
Jeremy Corbyn also attended a protest in memory of Mr Kaba
The 67 gang, pronounced six-seven, has terrorised people living in their Brixton Hill fiefdom for decades with threats of violence, drug dealing and also a racket where they extort cash from ‘freshies’ – slang for immigrants – in return for protecting their flats.
It has also fought bloody turf wars with rivals from estates sometimes just streets away from their area, including The 17 gang from Wandsworth and Claptown gang, known as CT, based in Clapham.
Multiple murder cases in recent years have been linked to this vicious feud, stoked by a back and forth of drill rap songs threatening each other with violence.
However, The 67 was given a veil of respectability when its members were nominated for the best newcomer prize at the MOBOs in 2016 after getting millions of views on YouTube.
Members of the gang are viewed as ‘godfathers’ of the London drill rap scene – notorious in its links to violence, especially knife crime.
Kaba rapped using the aliases Madix, Itch and Mad Itch.
One of the group’s highest profile rappers is Cassie Wuta-Ofei, better known as LD or Scribz, who famously wears a silver mask after police tried to ban him from YouTube.
But his career was disrupted for several years after being jailed for drugs offences.
Chris Kaba’s parents Helen Lumuanganu and Prosper Kaba at the Old Bailey on October 15
Chris Kaba was shot through the windscreen of a car in South London on September 5, 2022
Chris Kaba was described by friends as bright and funny
A photo issued by the CPS of the blue Audi Q8, the vehicle Chris Kaba was in when he died. It was linked to a shooting in Bromley months earlier
Wuta-Ofei and Malki Martin ,who goes by ASAP, were sentenced to a total of nine years behind bars for operating a drugs network that shipped heroin and crack cocaine to the Home Counties.
The pair, both central to the rap group 67, were stopped while driving a Mercedes A Class in Basingstoke, Hampshire in March 2018.
Inner London Crown Court heard that Wuta-Ofei and Martin had prior convictions for possession with intent to supply crack cocaine and heroin from 2013.
Wuta-Ofei would later insist that he was surprised when he was found guilty in a video filmed from the back of a Rolls Royce that picked him up after he was released from prison.
He also denied that drill rappers or The 67 were connected to violence and organised crime.
He claimed that he and his friends are ‘from the gutter’ and were looking at ways to make money from music.
He said: ‘People need to see that being an artist, and sometimes saying violent things, is just being an artist.
‘It’s like when you’re in a movie, acting like you’re about to rob a bank; it’s not really that person.
‘You still live a normal life. People think that it’s violence all day long, but they need to remember that everyone has a family’.
A computer generated image issued by the Crown Prosecution Service of a reconstruction shown to the court at the Old Bailey of the position of two firearms officers in front of the Audi
Chris Kaba is seen sat inside an Audi Q8 in Streatham, South London, on September 5, 2022
The footage shows armed officers running towards Mr Kaba’s car which was hemmed in
A shot is heard in the video before someone shouts ‘right we’ve got shots fired, shots fired’
Yet Kaba himself had bragged about knifing rivals in his own rap songs.
A year before the MOBO nomination in 2016, Kaba, then around 15, was part of a mob who had stabbed and beaten a rival in a Streatham phone shop.
The victim was stabbed repeatedly with knives and whipped with a dog chain in a mob attack described as a bloodbath by witnesses.
Rapping for The 67 under the name Itch, he bragged in a 2018 track about how he ‘went from buying a tracky at JD’s to chinging Jordan at Carphone’ – a clear nod to the attack. Ching is drill slang for stabbing a rival.
It is not yet clear why Chris Kaba ended up pursuing a life of crime.
He, his younger brothers and his Congolese parents had moved around south-east and south London.
His family say he was funny, boisterous, loyal and loved football.
One friend said he was extremely funny and would ‘light up a room’ at parties.
One cousin told The Times: ‘He was so strong; he persisted through difficult times and encouraged others to do the same. He knew how to make people feel special. You’d leave him feeling appreciated. He was a core member of the family – he mattered to us’.
Whether his loved-ones were fully aware of his criminal past is not known, but friends said that he was a family man who worked in construction before he died.
His father, a financial advisor, had said at the time: ‘Why my son? He was a good boy and not involved in trouble’.
At the time of his death, Mr Kaba was about to become a father and there were signs that he too was receptive to change from his last conversation with a friend, Elisha Fizul.
Ms Fizul, who spoke to Mr Kaba on the phone minutes before he was shot, said he was ‘calm’ and agreed with her when she gave him advice as an older person.
But it has also been reported that the mother of the child, born shortly after he died, had obtained a domestic violence protection order against him while she was pregnant.
As well as being a member of The 67, he was also involved in an ‘organised crime network’.
The Times spoke to several people in Brixton Hill who said Kaba and his friends ran a ‘protection racket’ – telling women on the estate that if they paid them they would ‘make sure no trouble would come to their door’.
The insider said that they targeted ‘freshies’ – slang from immigrants from central Africa.
‘They knew who to target. No offence but they went for freshies — they couldn’t come for us [Caribbean people] because they know we’re too feisty’, the source said.
Local businesses including hairdressers are said to have also ben shaken down for cash or protected in return for cheap or free haircuts for gang members.
Cash from drugs were also crucial to the gang, whose members have been convicted of county lines offences and carrying weapons, a crime that Kaba committed on several occasions.
After the Carphone Warehouse attack, Kaba fired a sawn-off shotgun outside a party in Canning Town, east London and given four years in a Young Offenders’ Institution for possession of an imitation firearm with intent to cause fear of violence.
After being convicted aged 13 for carrying a kitchen knife, he was handed a youth referral order.
But months later he was convicted of wounding with intent and sent to a Young Offenders’ Institution for two years.
After his release he was then convicted of burglary after he was part of a gang who raided a mobile phone shop.
The 67 gang is said to have taken its name from the telephone code for Brixton Hill in south London from which many of its members hail.
Its arch rival was the ’17 gang’ from the neighbouring Wandsworth Road area which took its name from the date 17-year-old Jordan Malutshi was fatally stabbed in a bar in the early hours of July 1 2013.
Coincidentally, it was Jordan’s brother Brandon, 25, who was shot in the legs in a nightclub by Mr Kaba on August 30 2022, an earlier trial of 67 gang associates was told.
In June 2013, Jerome Small, then 32, from Reading, was found guilty of Jordan’s murder and jailed for life following a trial at Reading Crown Court.
Mr Justice Goss had ruled that none of the details of Mr Kaba’s connection with gangs should be told to jurors during firearms officer Martyn Blake’s trial at the Old Bailey.
Mr Blake, 40, was cleared of Mr Kaba’s murder on Monday and reporting restrictions on earlier legal argument about the case have been lifted.
Defence barrister Patrick Gibbs KC had said Mr Kaba was a core member of the 67 gang and if he had not been fatally shot by Mr Blake during a police stop days later, on September 5 2022, he would have been tried in court for attempted murder.
Tit-for-tat violence is the stock in trade for London’s gang scene and the 67 gang was the most violent one in the Lambeth area, the Old Bailey heard.
Mr Gibbs had argued that Mr Blake was well aware of the escalating tension between Mr Kaba’s 67 gang and its rivals before the police stop prompted by the identification of an Audi linked to a shooting incident in Brixton the night before.
On Mr Blake’s concerns at the time, he said: ‘This defendant, like all the other officers in the team, is familiar with these gangs, knows what they are, knows how dangerous they are, knows how often they shoot each other.
‘It’s the most dangerous gang in south London, that’s what the context is. As it happens, he was completely right.’
A police report stated: ’67 is an identifiable street gang that are in an active and violent dispute with a rival faction of street gangs in Lambeth.
‘This dispute has encompassed numerous firearms discharges, stabbings and murders, the narrative for this dispute has played out in gang-related musical content since 2014.
’67 gang and those affiliated to the group are embedded in a culture of drug supply, serious violence, firearms and knife possession.’
The author of the report concluded: ‘It is my firm belief 67 have been and remain the highest harm street gang in Lambeth and that they continue to present serious risk to harm to those individuals and groups they are in opposition with or have had issues with.’
The report dated June 16 2023 was presented at a hearing to decide whether Mr Blake should be tried anonymously under his cypher NX121 because of the threat of gang reprisals over Mr Kaba’s death.
The author drew on experiences since 2008 of monitoring, reviewing and researching historical and contemporary events involving street gangs and individuals, efforts to suppress gang-related violence in Lambeth and work to divert young people away from gangs.
Mr Kaba was also listed as a former member of the separate 67 drill rap collective which first rose to fame around 2014.
It was among the first of its kind to enjoy mainstream popularity and chart success, with best known track Lets Lurk.
