On the day they killed him, Sofyen Belamouadden got up at seven and went into his mother's bedroom to get his socks from a drawer the family shared. "Mum, I'm going now," he？ said, before catching the bus. Sofyen, who was 15, lived with his brother and two sisters in Acton, west London, and went to Henry Compton School in Fulham, a trip that involved two bus rides.

       At noon that day, 25 March 2010, two months before the general election, he called his mother, Naima, to say he felt sick and wanted to come home. She told him to stay for a few more hours and phone again if he still felt bad. He said OK, and didn't call back.

       After school finished at 3.15pm, she called to ask where he was. "I'm on my way home," he said, so she closed her clothes shop and headed home to make him tea. Sofyen's younger sister, Sumayya, then 12, who went to a school nearby, met him at the bus stop, but he told her to go on ahead. When his bus got to Shepherd's Bush, where he had to change, he received a call from a friend. Then, instead of getting a bus to Acton, he took the 49 in the opposite direction to Victoria station, somewhere he had no cause to go. Just before it arrived there, at about five, his brother Mohamed called to ask where Sofyen was. "I'm on my way home now," he lied, "I'm coming." Within about half an hour, he was dead.