Teenager, 14, ‘trafficked 100 miles to sell drugs for gang’

The boy went missing last month after telling his mother and three siblings that he would see them after going to a youth club
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
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A boy of 14 who was allegedly trafficked to sell drugs 100 miles from his north London home has been reunited with his family in time for Christmas.

He went missing last month after telling his mother and three siblings that he would see them after meeting his friends at a youth club.

However, the teenager, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, did not come home.

His family said that although his behaviour had changed dramatically in the year since he was excluded from school, he had never disappeared before.

They reported him missing to police and appealed on social media for information on his whereabouts, with a cousin posting regularly.

Media in Australia and the family’s native Nigeria picked up the story after noticing what appeared to be an “alarming” number of teenage boys missing from the borough in north London.

Then, last Monday, a shopkeeper in Boston, Lincolnshire, sent a private message to the cousin saying that he had just spotted the boy.

He was holed up in a block of flats being forced to sell drugs in a case of “modern slavery”.

The teenager’s family believe that, like hundreds of other vulnerable children, he had been forced into “county lines” dealing, a distribution network in which urban gangs run drugs to country towns. The cousin passed the information to police and about 24 hours later, on Tuesday afternoon, the boy was brought home.

His mother told the Standard: “I just held him, I couldn’t speak. I always believed I would see him again. It was a big test of my faith. We will have a Christmas together, a nice quiet Christmas.”

She revealed that during her online search for her son she was targeted by trolls. “People were messaging me saying, ‘Your son is dead. Why are you looking for him? You know he’s in a river somewhere.’” Talking of her ordeal, the mother said: “You can’t sleep, you are in this physical pain that you can’t ever imagine leaving your body until you see them again.”

The boy’s cousin said the 14-year-old had gone to a school with other children with behavioural problems who he claimed had lured him into trouble. He said police had more cases than they could handle. “Something needs to be done at grassroots level. Many of these drug dealers are actually not users, fast money is their motivation.”

A Met spokesman said that “county lines” drug dealing was presenting a national challenge to police.

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