Hometown

Journalist Amber Haque returns to her hometown of Manchester and finds a community still reckoning with the death of Yousef Makki, a 17-year-old scholarship boy at a private school, who was killed in one of the city’s wealthiest suburbs in 2019. With Yousef’s killing and a subsequent murder trial still the talk of the town, Amber tries to understand the circumstances surrounding his death

Amber digs deeper into what happened after Yousef’s death by revisiting the police investigation, as well as the rumours that were swirling around the community at the time. Meanwhile, with an alarming number of knife crime incidents happening around her, Amber expands the investigation in an attempt to understand what’s going on across her city.

After hearing about a stabbing on the other side of town, Amber arrives at the scene and discovers another 17-year-old has been stabbed to death. As Amber attends the trial of the four young men charged with killing Mohamoud Mohamed, unexpected revelations in the courtroom push her to explore a potential link between Manchester’s past and what’s happening on the streets today. In court, police point to long-standing rivalries playing out on social media and the streets, but it’s a music video posted on the day of sentencing that motivates Amber to try and understand what, if anything, can stop the cycle of violence.

As one of the teenagers at the centre of the trial into the killing of Yousef Makki returns to court for an unrelated matter, a confidential report gives Amber a shocking new insight into the weeks leading up to Yousef’s death. Suggestions of a potential missed opportunity for a police intervention lead Amber to question if there is bias in the justice system. Meanwhile on the other side of town, a community is challenging three joint enterprise convictions which many say are unjust.