No Conviction After Four Trials In Tanesha Melbourne-Blake Case

Published November 7, 2026Updated November 8, 20263 min read

Tanesha Melbourne-Blake was 17 years old when she was killed on a street in Tottenham in north London. Eight years later, her case has ended with no conviction. Both men accused of her murder have now been cleared, closing a prosecution that ran through four separate trials at the

Old Bailey.

Tanesha was spending Easter Monday with friends on Chalgrove Road on April 2, 2018, when a car pulled up and shots were fired into the crowd. She was struck once in the chest and collapsed, telling a friend she had been shot. Neighbours and paramedics tried to help her at the scene, but she died of internal blood loss. She was weeks away from her 18th birthday.

Prosecutors told the court that Tanesha had no involvement in any criminality and may not have been the intended target. They said the shooting came from a long running rivalry between two north London groups, the Wood Green Mob and the Northumberland Park Killers, and that the drive by was carried out in retaliation for a violent attack on Marcus La-Croix the day before, an attack that had been filmed and shared widely on social media.

La-Croix, 38, a rapper from Hackney who performs as Bobby Slater, and Michael Clarke, 37, from Luton, were charged with murder in July 2024, more than six years after Tanesha died. Both men denied the charges from the start. The case against them leaned in part on the account of a fellow prisoner who claimed La-Croix had admitted involvement during a conversation in prison, an account La-Croix denied.

The road to a verdict was long and troubled. The first trial fell apart in April 2025 after questions arose about similarities between the prison witness statement and an undisclosed prison intelligence report. A judge said those issues needed to be fully examined before the case could continue, and the Metropolitan Police later acknowledged disclosure failures while denying officers had acted improperly.

La-Croix was tried a second time, with that trial opening in April 2026. On May 19, a jury returned not guilty verdicts on murder and firearms charges after deliberating for 13 hours and 34 minutes. Tanesha's mother left the courtroom in tears as the verdicts were read. Reporting restrictions kept that result private until the case against Clarke was finished.

Clarke was tried twice as well. His second jury deliberated for 32 hours and told the judge it could not reach a verdict, and the jury was discharged on October 30. On Friday, November 6, the Crown Prosecution Service offered no further evidence against him, and Judge Mark Dennis KC directed jurors to return not guilty verdicts, formally clearing him.

Tanesha's family sat through four complete trials over six years. The Metropolitan Police said the case was a lengthy and highly complex investigation. The gun used to kill Tanesha had also been used in the killing of 20 year old Joseph Williams-Torres in Walthamstow in March 2018, and the car used in the shooting was found burned out in Barnet five days later.

Tanesha was described in court as bubbly, with a great sense of humour. Her family has not spoken publicly since the final verdicts. The investigation into who killed her remains open, and no one has been convicted in connection with her death.

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