Free on Bail Twice in a Week, Then He Murdered a Grandfather

How many chances does a violent young stranger-attacker get before someone stops him? That is the question forced by what happened at Wood Green Crown Court on 10 September 2026, when Rasheed Rahman, aged 21, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the unprovoked murder of 55-year-old Mark Carroll in Camden. ^{3 21} The judge called him clearly very dangerous, and the facts behind that description are harder to sit with than the sentence itself. ³

Carroll, known to friends as Mogi, a father of two and a grandfather, was walking with a friend in St Martin's Gardens, Camden, in north London on 10 April 2024 when Rahman came up behind him and drove a five-inch kitchen knife into his back. ^{6 3} The single blow severed his aorta, and he died in hospital after police were called at 13:37. ^{9 10} Rahman did not know him. There was no argument, no robbery in that moment, no reason except that Carroll was there. ^{2 3}

The knife tells its own story about planning and opportunity. Rahman, then 19, had signed it out from his supported living accommodation in Romford on 9 April after asking for it to prepare food. ^{6 10} Residents needed permission to hold sharp knives, and he never returned it. ¹⁰ He took it into London the next day and used it from behind on a wholly innocent, unsuspecting man. ³ It took seconds, which is precisely why the days before matter so much. ³

Rahman was free on police bail when he killed Carroll, having been arrested and released twice in the days immediately before. ^{3 12} On 7 April 2024, after what was described as a rampage on a Camden canal towpath, during which he punched and kicked members of the public, threw a cafe sign and brandished a metal pole, he was released on bail. ^{12 7} Separately, in connection with an alleged brick thrown through a church office window, he was bailed again. ¹² He was free on both when he used the knife. ¹²

Seven weeks earlier, the pattern had already appeared. On 21 February 2024, in Ilford, Rahman followed Iulian Cavaliuc and his brother off the number 86 bus, stabbed Iulian in the back, then beat him with a wooden club, breaking his arm. ^{13 9} Cavaliuc reported the attack that day, but a delay in obtaining CCTV meant Rahman was not identified until after the murder. ^{13 12} He was only later convicted of wounding with intent for that attack. ¹³ In other words, police already had a back-stabbing of a stranger on file, unconnected to its author, while its author collected fresh arrests and walked out again. ^{12 13}

At trial Rahman was convicted of murder on 27 May 2026, with verdicts also returned on carrying a bladed article, threatening with an offensive weapon, and robbery. ³ Judge John Dodd KC, in sentencing, also called it a shocking and cowardly attack that left Carroll's family broken and grieving. ^{7 10} The defence argument that mental health mitigated the offence was rejected. ^{3 12}

Defence counsel raised complex PTSD and a claimed childhood trauma history in Sudan and Libya — a Boko Haram raid, his sister murdered, later enslavement, torture and rape — but there was no diminished-responsibility defence. ¹² The judge said the notes showed Rahman was not then suffering a severe enduring psychotic illness, that independent corroboration of the trauma history and even of his age was lacking, and that he did not consider the mental-health issues to have reduced the seriousness of the offending. ¹² He had a prior hospital admission in which cannabis was a factor, a 2023 community order, and was carrying cannabis when arrested for the murder. ¹² The ruling is blunt in its logic: a terrible past, even if true, does not explain away a present, repeated choice to attack strangers from behind. ³

The human weight is carried by the family. Carroll's daughter Danielle was 19 weeks pregnant when she learned he had been killed and had to identify his body. ¹² His daughter Ayisha has been diagnosed with PTSD. ¹² Both gave personal statements in court, and the family has been supported by the charity Hundred Families. ¹² Rahman, a Sudanese national, was told at sentencing that he would face deportation on release from custody. ⁷ Early reports carried the names as Rashid Ramen and Mark Carol; the names established by court and police records are Rasheed Rahman and Mark Carroll. ^{21 3}

Two things remain unresolved, and they point in opposite directions. The minimum term is recorded two ways and the public record does not settle it: the Metropolitan Police's official sentencing statement gives 27 years, with four and a half years concurrent on the other counts, while courtroom reporting recorded 24 years and 59 days. ^{21 3} Both figures are real as reports; which is the formal written minimum is not settled. ^{21 3} The other open matter is the Metropolitan Police preventability review into prior contact with Rahman in the days before the murder and into whether anything could have been done to prevent it. ¹² It is still described as launched, with no findings published. ¹² It will have to examine the two bail releases in the week before the killing and the CCTV delay that left the Ilford stabbing unconnected to him, the two points at which a known violent offender was given room. ^{12 13}

This was not an isolated crime that better policing might haveuluckily interrupted; it looks like a systemic failure in which the system worked as designed and still failed. ¹² A teenager who stabbed a stranger in the back, rampaged on a towpath, and signed out a kitchen knife he did not return was repeatedly assessed as someone who could be bailed, delayed, and housed. ^{7 10 13} Mark Carroll paid for that assessment with his life. ² Until the review answers why, the sentence closes the case but not the question. ¹²