‘I was given a gun when I turned 12 — teachers said I’d be dead by 25’

When Sosa Henkoma went to school, he didn’t carry books in his bag. Instead, his rucksack contained a gun and ammunition. 

‘For my 12th birthday, I was given a bulletproof vest and a shotgun. I had to have it on me 24/7,’ he tells Metro. ‘Every single day.’

Entrenched in gang culture during his childhood and given the street name ‘The Devil That Walks on Earth’, Sosa’s life has gone through an incredible 360, and he now trains Thames Valley Police on youth exploitation and grooming. 

However, his life leading up to this point has been one shaped by manipulation, targeted coercion, trauma, and neglect. 

Born in Nigeria, Sosa lost his mother aged two and later relocated to the UK, into a household tainted by abuse. School offered little escape, as he was regularly the target of bullies. 

‘I arrived in the UK at the age of seven and lived with my dad and stepmum for just eight months before I ran away. By the time I was eight, I was in care,’ the 27-year-old tells Metro. ‘Imagine; you’re in a world where you can’t even trust your own parents to keep you safe, but now you are meant to trust strangers.’

Knife crime in the UK remains at crisis levels. Latest statistics show that in the year ending March 2024, over 50,500 offences involved a blade. While these statistics often make the headlines, the quiet cogs of the systems behind them – neglect, exploitation and fear – often churn unseen.

‘The first time I was stabbed was at 11. I was out of hospital by 12, and then in prison aged 13. In the space of just two years, I’d been stabbed another nine times,’ remembers Sosa.  

It wasn’t until after his release – and his final spell in prison – when he was 18 that an immigration solicitor identified him as a victim of child grooming. His exploiters? A group he met as a child through the local park – coercion masquerading under a veneer of brotherhood.

 ‘It started with them asking to borrow my cherished childhood bike. When I said no, they told me I could drop something off for them instead. That’s how it began,’ Sosa explains. 

Soon introduced to the gang’s ‘olders’, he was asked if he wanted to ‘go cunch’ -working county lines, transporting illegal drugs across the UK, often across police and local authority boundaries.

He hesitated, but they pushed for a compromise – to ‘go away’ for just one day.

 ‘At the time, I was living in South London, but the next day I was taken to a drug den in Kent. I was introduced to a whole different world – of [concealing] drugs, meeting and staying with addicts. They never came back for me. I was left there, stuck, for three days. I was 11-years-old.’

When armed men from another gang raided the house, they discovered Sosa and returned him to London to his foster carer. It wasn’t long before threats from the group who had sent him there initially, began. ‘It became a case of debt bondage. If I didn’t get their stuff back, they were going to kill my foster mum for the violation of ‘robbing’ them.

‘As a child I didn’t feel like any adult would help me. So instead, I turned to my ‘saviours’, who ‘rescued’ me that day and joined their gang. An older gave me a revolver and told me I needed to always keep it with me. I was taught how to use it, and what I would deliver; what I knew then as colour[ed powders], became crack cocaine and heroin.’

Used as a mule, Sosa was not only told to carry drugs, but also firearms. ‘By the age of 13, I’d probably seen more handguns than most police officers. At one point I had more than six or seven firearms on me,’ he remembers. 

Sosa was sent to prison before he was 14, for the possession of firearms and causing grievous bodily harm. On his release, knife and gun violence soonn became an everyday reality and the teenager experienced both sides of the blade. ‘As time goes on, you are dissociated, numb. You regret everything. You act like it doesn’t affect you, but it breaks you every single time,’ he admits.

‘The first time I was stabbed was outside a chicken shop around the corner from school. I didn’t know I was in enemy territory. I was stabbed in my ribcage as I ran, but I didn’t know this until I woke up in hospital. That’s when I realised this is life or death. 

 At 15, Sosa was informed that his father had passed away from cancer. ‘The world treated me like an animal, but I was a child who’d lost everything. I felt suicidal at a young age. Not knowing love – being in the gang felt like family.’

As time passed, the violence intensified. Sosa was shot in the elbow during a drive-by, then again in the knee. After the first shooting, he was only taken to the ‘hood doctor’ who removed the bullet and wrapped the wound. In a hostage situation, a hot iron was even seared into his stomach.

‘In my heart I’ve never been a bad person, I was just protecting the people I believed to love. At one point I even went to war with my own olders. Every day I had to decide; am I going to let them kill me, or kill the people I love?’

Sosa went back to prison for a second time when he was 19 for the possession of a firearm, and became a father while behind bars.

On his release at 22, he spoke to a psychologist, who identified that Sosa had been groomed from a young age. It helped him come to the realisation that in order for the system to change, he had to initiate that change, for communities and young people. “There is hope to escape our environments and become something more.’

Free from the confines of his old life, Sosa has transformed his pain into purpose. ‘I came out of prison five years ago and now I’m invited to parliament every year. My teachers told me I’d be dead by 25. I’m 27 this month, I’ve got kids. I’m not a wave of destruction, I’m a wave of hope,’ he says. 

Today, he works with Thames Valley Police – and has even modelled for Burberry – using his lived experience to train officers on how to recognise and engage with young people who may be being groomed or exploited.

‘Even to this day I don’t trust the police, I don’t blame them either, the system just needs to be rebuilt for this generation. A lot of police do respect what I try to achieve. But, it’s very hard for services to accept the value of lived experience, not just in speaking on it, but our involvement in making changes.’

The system, Sosa says, is still failing. Campaigns for blunt-tip household knives are a strong start, but deeper systemic issues must be addressed. Young people require protection, he argues, a right increasingly lost to a lack of funding. ‘What are communities doing to keep people safe?’  

 Sosa speaks passionately about ACEs – Adverse Childhood Experiences – and how trauma inhibits a child’s ability to function, let alone succeed, at school. ‘These kids are dealing with grief, abuse and abandonment, while still expected to succeed. When they can’t, they’re excluded, so the cycle continues.’

Progress is underway to build a charity to offer young people safe exit routes, combining mentorship, paid sports tournaments, and education rooted in lived experience. Initiatives such as ‘Big Brother, Little Brother’ pairs young people with local mentors with one key rule – school attendance is mandatory to participate.

‘We need to teach emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, and how to manage anger,’ he explains. 

‘A knife alone isn’t dangerous, it’s the person holding it. We have to deal with the mindset first, and then the trauma.’