The single punch that left a ‘polite, quiet man’ dead
ASTUDENT has been found guilty of killing a dad with a single punch.
A jury at Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court convicted aspiring football manager Jafar Ali of the manslaughter of Keith Maden following a row outside a takeaway in Rochdale town centre.
Ali, who was 19 at the time of the attack, claimed 5ft 4ins Keith had threatened to butt him and called him a ‘ **** ing P***’, insisting he had acted in self-defence.
Keith, 59, who had health problems, never regained consciousness after smashing his head on the pavement and died in hospital the next day of ‘catastrophic’ injuries.
Ali told police officers Keith had pushed him, adding: “I’m not lying to you, I gave him the lightest punch I’ve ever given anyone in my life.
“I don’t even punch. I’m not a violent person... literally it was on impulse. I thought this guy was gonna rip my head off.”
Keith had two pints in The Reed Hotel on Yorkshire Street on the evening of September 28 last year, according to the barmaid who regarded him as a ‘polite, quiet man who did not cause trouble’. He then made his way to Dixy Chicken.
Keith may have appeared to be drunk but he wasn’t. He had suffered a stroke during an operation in 2016 which had left him unsteady on his feet while his speech was sometimes slurred. Despite his health problems, he was living independently and rebuilding his life.
Ali, now 20, told the jurors he had spent the day studying psychology of sports at the University of Salford. After his lectures, he went home and then headed into the town centre to meet friends. He claimed Keith stamped out a cigarette on the ground before blowing smoke into the face of one of his friends. Ali, of Church Stile, Rochdale, said he aimed to ‘de-escalate the situation’ by making a joke. “You look **** ing twisted (drunk),” he claimed to have told Keith.
He described Keith getting ever more angry as he came ‘right in my face’, claiming he threatened to butt him three times. Ali said his punch wasn’t a swinging right hand but a straight jab, which had been thrown in ‘selfdefence’.
Asked why he punched Mr Maden, Ali said: “Impulse, because he said he was going to headbutt me.”
His sudden act of violence ended in one man’s death while Ali’s ambition of a career in football management is in tatters.
Ali, a former Hopwood Hall College student who will be sentenced later this month, abandoned his course at Salford but has enrolled at New Buckinghamshire University to the football industry.