Learco Chindamo

The murderer of headteacher Philip Lawrence has been recalled to prison after being arrested in Catford on suspicion of robbery.

Learco Chindamo, 15 at the time of the 1995 murder, had been on probation since July, after serving fourteen years of a life sentence for the killing of Mr Lawrence.

After release Chindamo was moved to a secure probation hostel in Catford until a month ago, when he was allowed to move to live with his mother in Camden.

According to Harry Fletcher of the National Association of Probation Officers, the probation service took the decision to recall Chindamo to prison for his own and the public’s safety.

Philip Lawrence, a 48-year-old father of four, was stabbed to death fifteen years ago at the gates of St George’s Roman Catholic School in Maida Vale, after trying to help a pupil who was being attacked by a group of youths.

A Scotland Yard statement confirmed that a 30-year-old man was arrested at an address in Catford yesterday, in relation to an alleged robbery in Camden in the early hours of November 13.

The arrest is said to have been made after detectives allegedly identified Chindamo from CCTV footage of a mugging at a cashpoint on Belmont Street in Camden.

After being released on probation four months ago, Chindamo said: “I did a terrible thing when I killed Mr Lawrence. He said he would spend the rest of his life “atoning” and that he wanted to lead a “quiet and decent” life.

In 2007, a Home Office assessment said that Chindamo, who was born in Italy, posed a “genuine and present and sufficiently serious threat to the public in principle as to justify his deportation.”

However deportation was ruled to be illegal under the European convention on Human Rights.

At the time David Cameron seized upon the case as an example of the failings of the Human Rights Act, which enshrines the convention into UK law.