The infant sons of a woman who died in a crowd crush at the O2 Academy Brixton are starting to realise their mother isn’t coming home.

Rebecca Ikumelo was just 33 when she died days after ticketless fans tried to get into an Asake concert in December.

23-year-old Gaby Hutchinson also died and a 21-year-old woman is still seriously ill in hospital.

Rebecca’s family are desperate for answers and say grieving is made harder without answers as to why the crush happened.

Rebecca’s mother, 59-year-old Yetunde Olodo, says it’s now starting to dawn on her grandsons that something is wrong.

She said: ‘With the seven year-old you can see the sadness in him.

‘I don’t know if he understands it but he feels it because he is not seeing his mum around.

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‘We would ask him “where’s mummy?” and he would say “I don’t know”.

‘The little one used to say “she went to grandma’s house” but yesterday he said “she went away”, but he does not know where.

‘They don’t understand what is happening but I am sure they are really feeling their mum’s absence.’

The Metropolitan Police has today announced a criminal investigation is being conducted into the crush.

A range of potential offences such as ‘corporate manslaughter, criminal negligence manslaughter, unlawful act manslaughter and health and safety at work offences along with violent disorder and offences against the person or assaults’ are being considered.

Rebecca’s father Anthony, 63, says a basic sense of ‘compassion and respect’ for the families means everyone involved should help the investigation.

To do otherwise, he says, is a ‘further slap’ to the relatives, adding: ‘It feels like greed is one of the reasons why my daughter died and why all the things that should have been in place for safety were not there.

‘This is why everyone should be working with us, from the government down to find out what happened and to prevent it from happening again.

‘We want those responsible prosecuted and eventually we want the government to make sure this will not happen to another family again.’

Rebecca’s aunt, Mary, said safety and security questions had to be answered, who described the crush as ‘a stampede and it is not the first time this has happened in the UK’.

She said: ‘We are very angry and upset. The people who think that maybe they are going to get away with this – they need to be scared because we will never stop as a family until justice prevails.

‘She (Rebecca) deserves justice, (Gaby) deserves justice and there is another lady who has been in intensive – she deserves justice. Rebecca’s children deserve justice. This is just not acceptable.

‘The reality is that other concerts are happening and they are putting things in place for them to be safe, so why didn’t they do the same for this?

‘It should not be that you go to a concert and then die.’

Gaby was a security worker at Brixton Academy on the night of the crush.

Her mum Chris Hutchinson, 60, also has safety concerns. She added her daughter died at a time when she was ‘really in a happy place at last’ with plans to get married and having a child through IVF.

Chris said: ‘Why was she inside? Why was there so many people? Why were there so many people turning up? The venue was full and you have got people outside wanting to get in.’

Gaby’s sister Nina, 32, added: ‘She did not die of any underlying health problems.

‘She did not die because of an accident like a car accident.

‘She died at work and that should not have happened.

‘We used to go to concerts and now we don’t want to go. We don’t want to be in spaces that could be too crowded because we are worried that could happen (again).

‘I know it is a once-in-a-lifetime thing that it could ever occur again but it has happened to us and has left a fear embedded in us.

‘I hope that for the people who were selling supposedly dodgy tickets that was worth it to them because ultimately it is (part of) what led to my sister’s death.

‘There would not have been that excess of people there who did not have tickets, if you did not do that.’

Detective Chief Inspector Nigel Penney said: ‘This is being treated as a criminal investigation.

‘We do have persons of interest that we are looking into. It is a very complicated and broad investigation.

‘We are looking at every avenue to establish exactly what went wrong. There are many people and organisations involved in this investigation that could provide further information to us.

‘There were hundreds of people there filming the incident on their mobile phones – we don’t have hundreds of pieces of social media, so however insignificant it is we want people to come forward with whatever they have.’

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