A 16-year-old boy has died after staff found him unresponsive in his cell at Feltham A young offender institution.
The boy was found on the evening of Monday 20 April. Paramedics treated him at the scene and on the way to hospital. Doctors pronounced him dead after he arrived.
Authorities have not yet given an official cause of death. Police have described the death as “unexpected” and say they are carrying out a full investigation. They have made no arrests. A post-mortem examination will take place. Adrian Usher, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, will also conduct a full investigation.
Friends and family want his name made public. They have also called for a full inquiry into how he died. Prison News does not name children.
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson set out the timeline. The London Ambulance Service received a call at around 9.30pm on Monday 20 April and treated the boy before taking him to hospital. “He sadly died at 11.43pm,” the spokesperson said. Staff at Feltham notified police of the death at 12.05am the next day.
Family seeks answers
The boy’s girlfriend spoke anonymously to the Daily Mail. She said she had identified his body at West Middlesex Hospital and had seen bruises and other marks on it. She also said he had a heart condition, but one that very rarely proves fatal.
According to his girlfriend, his mother first heard that he had died in the prison. Only later did the family learn that he had died in hospital. She said the family did not know what had happened. She added that he had planned to return to college.
The boy had been due in court three days after he was found, for an appeal against a conviction.
Concerns over the youth estate
A Youth Custody Service spokesperson said the service was “saddened to hear of the death of a child from YOI Feltham who died in hospital on Monday”. The spokesperson added that a full investigation would follow and that further comment would be inappropriate at this stage.
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the charity Nacro, offered his sympathy to the boy’s family. He said the full circumstances were not yet known. “It is clear that the youth custodial estate is not fit for purpose,” he added. He urged the Government to speed up its youth justice reforms. These should include a plan to close prisons like Feltham, he said. Smaller secure children’s homes should take their place.
In 2024, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, called Feltham the “most violent prison in England and Wales”. It had recorded 320 incidents of disorder over 12 months, a rise of 300 per cent on the year before.
When inspectors returned in August 2025, they found the prison stabilising under new management. Time out of cell and purposeful activity remained too low, however. Inspectors put this largely down to problems between the teenagers held there. That inspection rated safety and purposeful activity as poor, and care and resettlement as reasonably good.
A 2026 report from the Independent Monitoring Board found improvements since Feltham A and Feltham B, a men’s prison, came under separate management. The board said, however, that the complex problems of the boys held there still led to conflict. The resulting pressure on staff was causing stress and sickness among officers.
