Cousins ‘killed boy aged 15 as he walked home from his school’
TWO teenage cousins dressed all in black ambushed and murdered a boy of 15 walking home from school, a court heard yesterday.
There were tears and gasps from the public gallery as CCTV of the fatal knife attack was shown.
Khayri McLean had just left school with friends when he was set upon by the two youths aged 15 and 16.
The younger attacker, who has admitted murder, leapt in the air and thrust a knife with a 12in blade through his chest and into his heart. This was the fatal blow.
Moments later cameras recorded the elder cousin, who is now 17, jumping over Khayri as he lay dying.
He stabbed him in the leg in an alleged attempt to ‘ finish the job’. It is this older boy who is on trial for murder and the court heard that Khayri was his ‘enemy’.
Jonathan Sandiford KC, prosecuting, told the jury that immediately after the attack Khayri was able to stagger a short way before collapsing outside his school.
A passing doctor and paramedics treated the teenager who was flown to hospital by air ambulance but died later that day.
Mr Sandiford said the murder happened shortly before 3pm one Wednesday last September.
‘Khayri McLean was 15, he was making his way home from school with other friends, still wearing his school uniform from his school in Huddersfield, when he was attacked and murdered,’ he told Leeds Crown Court.
Mr Sandiford said it was not ‘some act of spontaneous or unfortunate violence’ but a ‘ well planned, targeted and well executed attack’. The 17-year- old
defendant admits an offence of carrying a knife in public but denies murder.
The court heard he accepts he was caught on camera but claims he was planning to confront a different boy who had broken windows at his mother’s house. His case is that he stumbled, panto icked and used his knife in fear he would himself be attacked.
But Mr Sandiford told the jury this explanation was a ‘ pack of lies’. Detailing the murder, he said the cousins met up and lay in wait for Khayri in an alleyway near his school. They were wearing black clothing, balaclavas and sunglasses
hide their identities and so no one could be sure what colour their skin was.
Witnesses said both were ‘aggressive’ and headed straight for their victim, with the younger attacker shouting ‘Oi Khayri’ or ‘Yo Khayri’ to distract him.
Moments later he stabbed the teenager through a lung and into his heart. Mr Sandiford said that as he did so he dropped his mobile phone, providing police with evidence to trace the pair.
The boy’s DNA was also found on the phone’s SIM card.
Khayri staggered away and was ‘pursued’ at speed by the older attacker. ‘ He was running so fast that he had to leap over Khayri McLean, twisting in the air to do so,’ said the prosecutor.
The teenager allegedly stabbed Khayri in the leg before running off. The attackers changed their
clothing and stashed what they were wearing in a bag and rucksack hidden in nearby woods. Associates later picked up the bags, the court heard.
Mr Sandiford said word spread fast about the stabbing and the defendant’s mother contacted him by text out of concern for his safety. He assured her in a text: ‘I’m fine mum don’t worry.’
Later he texted her mobile phone asking: ‘ Did you say Khayri’s stabbed someone?’
She begged him to ‘ come in’ and in a text around 90 minutes after the attack a message from her phone said: ‘Your enemy has been stabbed and it doesn’t look good.’
The court heard the defendant was arrested by police early the next day and his alleged accomplice handed himself in.
The case continues.
‘Trying to finish the job’