‘My brother was killed by his rich-kid friend’
Promising student Yousef Makki, 17, died three years ago after being stabbed in the heart by a fellow student from his prestigious private school in Manchester
Yousef Makki’s family was plunged into a nightmare when the schoolboy was killed. Here, his sister, former schoolteacher Jade Akoum, 31, mum to Raafat, 12, Zack, five, Daniel, four, and Yousef, 18 months, shares the harrowing story of her family’s fight for justice…
Seeing my son Raafat setting off for school in his smart uniform always makes me proud. It’s the same uniform my brother Yousef wore to Manchester Grammar School and it’s a poignant reminder of everything we lost when Yousef was stabbed to death in March 2019, aged 17.
There were 11 years between Yousef and me. When our mum Debbie got together with Yousef’s dad, Ghaleb, I begged her for a little brother.
I adored Yousef from the moment he was born. We all did. It was clear from an early age that he was very bright. His teachers said he was so clever the staff were having to do extra training to keep up.
We were all thrilled when he received a scholarship to the nearby Manchester
Grammar School, a prestigious private school. Mum was single by then and had rheumatoid arthritis, but she saved up to buy the expensive school uniform and was full of pride when Yousef quickly became an A* student.
He didn’t just excel at his studies, he was sporty too, playing basketball, football and tennis. And he loved boxing.
He made some great friends, among them Adam Chowdhary, who was from a wealthy family like most of his friends. When Yousef went out in the evenings, Mum never worried because he visited the well-todo areas and she thought he’d be safer there than in Burnage, where we lived.
At 17, he was planning his future and hoped to go to Oxford or Cambridge to study medicine and perhaps become a heart surgeon. None of us doubted that he’d make it.
By then my husband Mazen and I had two more children, Zack and Daniel, who, like Raafat, adored their Uncle Yousef. He’d spend hours patiently playing with them all.
But then, on 2 March 2019, our world was shattered. I’d just put the children to bed when the phone rang. It was Mum. Something bad had happened to Yousef and we should get to the hospital quickly.
I couldn’t drive so Mazen went, keeping me up-to-date with phone calls while I paced up and down at home.
Mazen called again. Yousef hadn’t made it. He had died from a single stab wound to the heart. We were all distraught and none of us could understand how this could have happened. The world of knife crime was completely alien to us.
The next morning I went to the mortuary. Yousef looked so peaceful, as though he was just sleeping. There was still gel in his hair.
But when I kissed him on the forehead and felt how cold he was, it brought it home that he’d really gone.
The police said the incident had happened in the affluent Hale Barns area. Shockingly,
‘I attended the trial every day. We were touched when his teachers came too’
Yousef’s friend Chowdhary and another school friend we didn’t know, Joshua Molnar, had been arrested.
At first, Molnar said Yousef had been attacked by strangers, but he later admitted that he’d stabbed Yousef. He said it was self-defence and that the knife was Yousef’s. It didn’t make sense. Yousef hated violence and, of course, he wasn’t there to tell his side of the story.
In pursuit of justice
Molnar was charged with murder as well as perverting the course of justice for lying to police about the attack and for possessing a knife. Chowdhary was charged with perverting the course of justice and possessing a knife.
Yousef’s friends rallied round but we heard nothing from Chowdhary or Molnar – no apology, no remorse.
When the trial was held in June 2019, Mum and I attended every day, along with family and many of Yousef’s friends. We were touched when teachers from the school came too.
It was really hard listening to the defence’s position that the boys were involved in drugs and that Molnar had killed Yousef in selfdefence after he’d taunted him about an earlier fight with some drug dealers.
The narrative seemed to be that Molnar and Chowdhary were just naive teens from good families while Yousef was portrayed as a drug user with a temper. Still we thought, at least Molnar would be punished for killing our boy.
After the four-week trial, we’d barely ordered a cup of tea at the café near the court when we got a call to say the jury had reached a verdict. It had been so quick, we were full of confidence as we rushed back to the courtroom.
But when the verdicts were announced, none of us could believe it when we heard the words “not guilty”. Molnar was cleared of murder and manslaughter. Chowdhary was cleared of perverting the course of justice.
All the emotion we’d been holding in came flooding out. We were all devastated, sobbing and screaming. It seemed no one was going to be held accountable for Yousef’s death.
The boys admitted possessing knives and Molnar admitted perverting the course of justice. He was sentenced to 16 months detention and Chowdhary to four months, sentences we felt were far too lenient for knife crimes. Molnar was released after eight months, before we had even reached the anniversary of Yousef’s death.
We felt betrayed by the justice system and Mum poured all her energy into campaigning. There was so much support in the community and we raised money for a legal team to look at the evidence again.
But everything stopped when Covid hit. Mum struggled during the lockdown. She was isolated and, without the campaign to focus on, she only had her grief.
In May 2020, she developed sepsis. Her organs failed and she died in hospital. I really believe she died of a broken heart. I couldn’t fully comprehend that I’d lost her too.
I knew Mum wanted me to continue the fight and it felt like a breakthrough when we managed to secure an inquest last November.
We hoped this would establish the facts and banish the negative image of Yousef that had been painted in court.
Fight continues
Our legal team found some crucial CCTV that showed Yousef had been the peacemaker that night. It was such a relief to be able to show the world the gentle boy he really was.
In another clip he was seen just before he was killed, sprinting towards Chowdhary and Molnar as though about to intervene – very different to Molnar and Chowdhary’s version.
But the coroner said she couldn’t establish the precise sequence of events and was unable to decide whether Yousef’s death was unlawful or accidental. We were desperately disappointed not to get a verdict of unlawful death.
We felt like no one believed us. We’re now pushing for a judicial review to look into the case again. We’ve also set up the Yousef Makki Foundation for underprivileged kids, which feels like a fitting way to remember the caring boy he was. Not that we’ll ever forget him. There are photos of him in the house and I even have the clothes he was wearing when he died, including his blood-stained shirt and the trainers he got for his 17th birthday and loved wearing. I couldn’t bear to throw them away.
Yousef had such a promising life ahead of him and it was brutally snatched away from him and from us. I can’t give up the fight for justice, for Yousef’s sake and for Mum’s.