
On Monday 14th July at 7pm, we held a vigil at Centre Road/Woodford Road, where, on 16th June, Barry Shonibare, who lived locally in Forest Gate, was hit by a car driver—he died in hospital 5 days later. We were joined by many of Barry’s family and friends, some of whom had travelled to be with us. Our deputy co-ordinator, Karen, read the following remarks. We then held a minute’s silence and laid flowers at Centre Road near the site of the crash.
We’re here tonight to mark what happened here four weeks ago. At around lunchtime on Monday 16th of June, Barry Shonibare was cycling here when he was involved in a collision with a car and was severely injured. Police were called at 12.22pm and the London Ambulance service attended the scene. Despite the best efforts of medical staff, Barry Shonibare sadly died in hospital on Saturday, 21 June.
Our deepest condolences go to Barry’s friends and family, who are here tonight.
Those of us who live here and travel through this stretch of Centre Road and Woodford Road on a regular basis know that it is dangerous. The relative safety of the wand-protected cycle lanes further up the road disappears. The road widens. As you can tell even now, speeding is endemic here.
We and our LCC colleagues in Redbridge have campaigned on this for some time. Surely now is the time to fund and build the measures that we know will prevent tragedies like this from happening again? We should not have to wait for someone else to be killed or injured before this danger is removed. As Barry’s family have stated, “no family or individuals should suffer this heartbreak again.”
We’ll now observe a minute’s silence to reflect, and to pay our respects to Barry Shonibare.
May he rest in peace. Thank you.