Qualla: Killing of Mark Duggan

Killing of Mark Duggan: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stacey Harris, CC BY-SA 2.0. He was a passenger in a minicab on Ferry Lane, heading home through Tottenham on a warm August evening. Mark Duggan was 29 years old, the father of four children with his long-term partner Semone Wilson, with another child on the way. Within seconds of armed officers stopping the cab at 18:15 on 4 August 2011, he was on the ground. Two shots had been fired by a Metropolitan Police firearms officer known publicly only as V53 — the first passing through Duggan's bicep and lodging in a fellow officer's radio, the second striking him in the chest. The handgun police later said justified the shooting was recovered roughly 20 feet away, on the other side of a fence, wrapped in a sock. Mark Duggan had no firearm in his hand when he died.

Read more: Killing of Mark Duggan on Qualla

Image: Stacey Harris | CC BY-SA 2.0

Killing of Mark Duggan: A Family Man on Ferry Lane

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Trimming from Croydon, England, CC BY 2.0. Before he became a symbol, Mark Duggan was a son and a father. Born on 15 September 1981, he had grown up partly in Tottenham and partly in Manchester, where he lived with his maternal aunt between the ages of 12 and 17. By 2011 he had three children at home — aged 10, 7, and 18 ...

Read more: Killing of Mark Duggan on Qualla

Image: Peter Trimming from Croydon, England | CC BY 2.0

Killing of Mark Duggan: Two Shots, Then a Story That Did Not Hold

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stacey Harris, CC BY-SA 2.0. The official narrative collapsed almost immediately. In the hours after the shooting, the IPCC told reporters that an officer had been shot first by Duggan — a claim that placed his death within the comforting frame of a shootout. It was not true. The bullet lodged in the police ...

Read more: Killing of Mark Duggan on Qualla

Image: Stacey Harris | CC BY-SA 2.0

Killing of Mark Duggan: Broadwater Farm to the High Court

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stacey Harris, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the evening of 6 August, two days after the shooting, Duggan's relatives and neighbours walked from the Broadwater Farm estate to Tottenham Police Station. They wanted answers. They got silence. At about 20:20 that night, two police cars on the street outside the station were ...

Read more: Killing of Mark Duggan on Qualla

Image: Stacey Harris | CC BY-SA 2.0

Killing of Mark Duggan: Tottenham, Then and Now

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stacey Harris, CC BY-SA 2.0. The shooting did not happen in a vacuum. Tottenham had carried the memory of the 1985 Broadwater Farm riot for a quarter of a century, and the relationship between the Metropolitan Police and Black Londoners in the area had been mended and frayed and mended again. David Lammy, th...

Read more: Killing of Mark Duggan on Qualla

Image: Stacey Harris | CC BY-SA 2.0