JANUARY 2025
It was the grimmest of starts to the year, with the tragic death of an 11-year-old schoolboy on the railway tracks near Kenley, and a trial outcome of one of the most gruesome murders.
Riddlesdown pupil killed in ‘tragic accident’ by Kenley Station
Deadly spot: the Bourne View level crossing, where 11-year-old Jaiden Shehata was killed in January
Jaiden Shehata was walking to school at Riddlesdown Collegiate just after 8am on January 23 when he was hit by a train at the Bourne View pedestrian crossing, not far from Kenley Station. The boy died at the scene.
The school’s principal, Daniel Osborne, wrote to parents: “This tragedy will undoubtedly affect all of us.”
The resulting rail safety investigation, published by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch, found no fault with the train or its driver, with CCTV showing the boy crossing the tracks with the hood of his coat pulled up while watching something on his mobile phone.
“The driver of the train sounded the train’s horn and applied the emergency brake on realising that the pedestrian was starting to cross the railway,” the RAIB said in its findings.
“The pedestrian looked up in response to the horn but did not have time to react and move clear of the train before it reached the crossing.”
The RAIB report recommended a national awareness campaign for schools to make pupils better aware of the need to cross railway lines with the same caution that they would cross a busy road.
Some residents ran a petition to get the crossing closed altogether, while in the last few months of 2025, Network Rail was conducting works along the line to introduce new warning features for pedestrians when a train is approaching.
Armed police in ‘some kind of stand-off’ at Carshalton house
Endgame: police led away a man at Buckhurst Avenue, Carshalton, after a six-hour stand-off
One of our strangest of exclusives, in all 15 years that Inside Croydon has been reporting the events in and around our borough, came when one of our regular correspondents looked out of their window in Carshalton and saw armed police poised outside a neighbour’s home.
A tense, six-hour siege of a house on Bramblewood Close, just off Buckhurst Avenue, a usually quiet residential street, came to an end by mid-afternoon, as police emerged with a man in hand-cuffs.
Emergency services responded to reports of an assault, and called in specialist support when a suspect appeared to be armed. The situation returned to normal, with no reports of serious injuries, when a man was arrested with what is believed to be an imitation firearm.
An estimated 20 specially trained police, many of them armed, some accompanied by police dogs, had been surrounding a house on , since not long after 9am.
‘Sadistic and twisted’ killer Sansom is given full life sentence
Murderer: Steve Sansom
The end of the month also brought the Old Bailey sentencing of sadistic murderer Steven Sansom, who had committed a horrific killing in New Addington on Christmas Eve 1998, but was released on licence and killed again.
Sansom and Gemma Watts, from Forestdale, both entered guilty pleas to the murder of 38-year-old Sarah Mayhew and disposing of her severed body parts in different places around south London.
The police said that Sansom “dumped [Mayhew’s] body over several trips, in plain sight of the public”.
Also in January 2025…
New Addington-based Cronx Brewery goes into liquidation
This was to become a familiar theme:
Another Whitgift store to close – and manager blames Westfield
And out and about with Ken Towl:
Cockneys offers a real taste of soon-to-be-lost London tradition
NUMBER CRUNCHING: In January 2025, articles on Inside Croydon were read almost 432,000 times, as the site welcomed close to a quarter of a million visitors. We published 454 public comments that month.
Our Andrew Fisher Interview series is available via our Spotify page, by clicking here
- For February’s top news stories, have a look at this: Purley Pool, porkie pies and a busted budget
- For the highlights, and council lowlights, from March, click here: Council’s closed doors, Selhurst security, Bridge to Nowhere
- Check out what was making the news Inside Croydon in April by clicking here
- While in May 2025, we were mostly watching football:After 120 years, the Eagles live the dream at Wembley cup final
- June 2025 was When council boss blocked staff from reading Inside Croydon
- In July, Inside Croydon exposed how Croydon’s cash-strapped council was paying consultant £726 PER HOUR
- Fly-tipped mattresses that the council refused to touch, library books discared all over a street in Broad Green, more buckets than businesses in the Whitgift Centre, and Reform’s dead candidate for mayor. All to be found on Inside Croydon in August 2025
- In September 2025, we were the first to report the latest housing scandal to hit Croydon, and the council
- And in October, we broke the news that Katherine Kerswell had quit as council CEO, and was to received a £50,000 pay-off
- In November and December, we even had cabinet minister Steve Reed retweeting links to Inside Croydon news reports, which included coverage of the spaghetti restaurant named the best in the country
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
