Drug-dealing big brother whose London gang war could have cost seven-year-old Joel Urhie his life

One photograph in particular epitomises the brutal, nihilistic world Sam Urhie inhabited. He is sitting on his bed defiantly raising a middle finger to the camera.

But the ‘selfie’ was not taken in his bedroom.

Instead of the trademark designer labels (such as Emporio Armani) he normally wears, the 21-year-old is dressed in drab grey sweatshirt and trousers — visible in the background is a white-washed wall. Urhie is in fact posing, for his ‘audience’ on Twitter, from what appears to be his prison cell.

In 2016 he was jailed for four years and four months for possessing cocaine and heroin with intent to supply. 

Under different circumstances, his conviction would be of little interest to anyone who didn’t know him. 

After all, pushing drugs is so commonplace on the streets of our towns and cities it is no longer newsworthy; except for one terrible, heartbreaking connection in this case.

Urhie’s life of crime may yet hold the key to the death his younger brother Joel, who died in an arson attack on his home in Deptford, South London, in the early hours of Tuesday. 

His mum Sophie, 49, and sister Sarah, 19, escaped the inferno but little Joel was trapped in his bedroom as flames and smoke filled his house; a sadder or more stomach-churning tragedy it would be difficult to contemplate.

Urhie’s life of crime may yet hold the key to the death his younger brother Joel, seven, who died in an arson attack on his home in Deptford, South London, in the early hours of Tuesday

But, as police were quick to point out: ‘It is difficult to imagine a seven-year-old is the motive for the attack.’

Even relatives suspect that Joel — who dreamed of being a fireman when he grew up, and, pitifully, is pictured posing in a fireman’s outfit — may have been caught in the crossfire of a turf war involving his sibling Sam. It was, as the Mail’s front page put it this week, enough to break your heart.

For this is a haunting tale of crime spiralling out of control, which the police seem unable to stem, and which may have claimed its most poignant victim yet.

Joel’s big brother Sam wasn’t living at the house at the time of the attack. After release from prison three months ago, he went to stay with this mother, but was attacked and stabbed, according to his aunt Ruth Urhie.

She told the Mail: ‘They came to the house and stabbed him so he ran from the house. He was too scared to go back there.’

Yet, old friends and neighbours remember Sam Urhie as a polite, church-going boy from a decent, loving family.

They do not recognise the young man striking gangster poses on social media, dripping in bling jewellery and waving wads of cash, on drill music videos, the ultra-violent rap genre that glamorises stabbings and shootings and has been blamed for the rise in a string of tit-for-tat gang killings.

Indeed, he was an overweight child and had to be enrolled on a fitness programme devised by Great Ormond Street Hospital. His transformation into a fit, sports-mad youngster, who played football, hockey and basketball, was featured in the local paper.

‘I’ve cleared the junk food from the house,’ his mother Sophie, a nurse, proudly announced. ‘There are no fizzy drinks or processed foods and we are all much more conscious of what we eat.

‘It’s great that Samuel helps me in the kitchen — it’s giving him skills for life.’

How bitterly ironic her words proved to be.

Joel’s big brother Sam wasn’t living at the house at the time of the attack. After release from prison three months ago, he went to stay with this mother, but was attacked and stabbed, according to his aunt Ruth Urhie

Samuel Urhie was seven at the time. Not long afterwards, he began his descent into a very different world from the one his mother, a universally popular member of the local community, had hoped for him.

By the age of 11, he was experimenting with drugs. ‘Sam told me he was smoking weed (cannabis) and was boasting about being a ‘gangster’,’ recalled a pal from those days. ‘The problem was that his mum had to go to work and his father had left home by then.’

Sam Urhie was subsequently sent to a young offenders’ unit after running into trouble with the police.

By 17, he was a father himself. One recent picture on his Twitter account shows him with his toddler son under the caption: ‘MiniSkeemz.’ ‘Skeemz’ is Urhie’s street name, the name by which he is known in gangland South London in other words.

At least two of his friends have already fallen victim to knife crime.Rukevwe Tadafe — nicknamed ‘Peanut’ — died after being stabbed outside Lewisham shopping centre in April 2016. Mr Tadafe lived with his family in a flat near the Urhie home. ‘I’ll do anything to see my bro Peanut again,’ Sam Urhie wrote online after his death.

Urhie was also an associate of drill rapper Showkey (real name Leoandro Osemeke), who was killed in 2016 at a party in Peckham, South London.

Just seconds after arriving, the 16-year-old was stabbed twice in the chest. The teenager wielding the knife was cleared of murder at last year after the jury accepted he was acting in self defence.

Showkey was due to be a witness in another trial over the death of fellow drill rap artist Myron Yarde, 17, who was stabbed in New Cross, which borders Deptford, in 2016.

There is something else you should know about Osemeke. He was a member of the notorious 814 gang, a drug-dealing ‘crew’ operating in the Deptford postcode. Why is this significant? Because it has been reported that Sam Urhie was also a member of the 814 gang.

Masked members of 814 can be seen wearing EA7 Emporio Armani sports tops in one of their rap videos about ‘shanking’ (stabbing people). Sam Urhie also has a top with the same EA7 logo.

Locals say the 814 gang — an offshoot of The Ghetto Boys — were locked in a bitter feud with a rival gang. The two groups regularly trade insults in their rap videos.

‘After he lost his direction and he got in with the gangs, they became his family,’ a childhood friend told the Mail. ‘He no longer relied on his family. He believed in the gang. Sam did something, somewhere to someone and this [the fire] was payback.’ Pictured: Sam in drill artist Kass’s music video On My Own

In one video, a rapper says if you ‘f***’ with his clique, ‘man a get left like a MDot’ — referencing the fatal stabbing of 814’s Myron Yarde, who used the moniker MDot.

Might the motive for the arson attack on the Urhies’ home on Adolphus Street be found in the ongoing rivalry between the two gangs? Police stress they are keeping an open mind and, so far, there have been no arrests.

It is understood that detectives have questioned Sam Urhie — as a witness not a suspect — about the blaze that claimed the life of his brother.

The Metropolitan Police refused to confirm this, but it is impossible not to believe that the gangland background of Sam Urhie is not now coming under intense scrutiny in the investigation. Sam Urhie, it should be stressed, is not suspected of any involvement and is heartbroken by the loss of Joel.

When he turned up at the hospital where his mother and sister, a university student, were taken after the fire, a relative said he was distraught, saying: ‘Why, why, why, why him? Oh, why not me? It could have been me. Why not me to die?’

On a human level, no one could fail to have sympathy for him, whatever he may have done in the past. It is a past clearly chronicled for all to see on social media.

Urhie is seen blowing smoke in drill artist Kass’s music video On My Own. In April, he posted the word ‘Gangg’ after viewing another video by drill rapper Dig Dat which tells of a drug dealer with a ‘Gucci manbag’.

Police have warned that threats made in such ‘performances’ have triggered real-life violence.

Following his release, Urhie is said to have told his family he was ‘going straight’. But there was little evidence of this either before or after his trial for drug dealing in 2016. During the trial, he tweeted: ‘Pigs [Police] telling me I’m looking at 12 for this conspiracy to supply class A ish (s***’.

Joel’s sister Sarah posted this six-second selfie video of her and her brother in happier times. The heart-rending clip sees Joel give his big sister a tender kiss.

As the running commentary on his case continued, he wrote: ‘Been on trial for 11 weeks and still have three weeks to go’, before adding: ‘I’ve given up. I can feel a guilty coming on verdict day . . . the Feds [police] keep taking my people all of them handcuffed.’

And on his Twitter feed, as recently as last month, he boasted about selling drugs, saying: ‘I would have got a 9-5 if the T weren’t booming like 86.’ ‘T’ is the shortened version of Tina — slang for the drug crystal meth — while ‘like 86’ means ‘like it’s going out of fashion’.

Drugs and gangs have become endemic in this corner of London where this tragedy was played out.

Residents told us that schoolchildren act as look-outs for the dealers, who ply their trade in broad daylight while younger children play with their mothers in the park. There were 1,300 stabbings in London in the first half of 2018 alone.

Joel became the capital’s 90th murder victim this year.

His sister has posted a six-second selfie video of her and her brother in happier times. The heart-rending clip, which appears to have been taken in their living room, sees Joel give his big sister a tender kiss. Alongside is the caption: ‘Rest in perfect peace my amazing little brother Joel, nothing makes sense right now, I love you.’

Both clips were posted on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon, and by the following night had been viewed 30,000 times and liked by thousands of viewers.

Back at the scene of the tragedy in Deptford, floral tributes have been left on a fence opposite the gutted house. One, in child-like handwriting, read: ‘Sorry you had to die. It must have been terrifying to be surrounded by fire.’

A card pinned to a post by one family said: ‘Sleep tight with the angels Joel. Your beautiful smile will be remembered for ever.’

But one haunting question remains: Why? The childhood friend of Sam Urhie we spoke to is in little doubt.

‘After he lost his direction and he got in with the gangs, they became his family,’ said the friend. ‘He no longer relied on his family. He believed in the gang. Sam did something, somewhere to someone and this [the fire] was payback.’