A teenager who posted a video on Snapchat of the heavily bleeding 63-year-old man he had just stabbed was today, Monday, convicted of manslaughter.
The Luton youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons, uploaded six or seven seconds of footage from his mobile phone showing fatally-wounded Bolton man Ghulam Raja.
Prosecutor Sarah Morris told Luton Crown Court that Mr Raja was stabbed four times with a kitchen knife, once to the front right thigh, once to the neck and twice to the head.
One stab entered the brain and caused a catastrophic fatal injury.
“This defendant did not call for an ambulance. He unlocked his mobile phone, went into the Snapchat App and recorded a seven or eight seconds video clip and uploaded it to Snapchat,” she said.
He recorded Mr Raja, who had travelled to Luton to visit his mother, bleeding heavily on a bed that had been set up in the living room.
The youth, who is now 17 and was 16 at the time, denied murdering Mr Raja in the afternoon of Monday, November 15 last year.
He was cleared of murdering Mr Raja, but was convicted by the jury of manslaughter.
Ms Morris told the jury of six men and six women: “He went to the kitchen, armed himself with a kitchen knife. The victim was unarmed.”
She said Mr Raja’s only interest in coming to Luton was to visit his elderly mother who he had not seen for many, many months.
He had been in Pakistan and was delayed there by the pandemic.
After speaking to a relative, the boy dialled 999 saying: “There has been a murder.”
He said the victim had been stabbed and he was the offender.
When asked by the operator what weapon had been used, he is said to have replied sarcastically: “A knife innit, what do you think? I done it. It was self-defence though.”
When the police arrived, they drew Tasers and told the youth to come outside and to get to the ground. He complied and was arrested for attempted murder.
Ms Morris said when the youth was medically examined at the police station, there was only a small mark on his right arm.
When interviewed, he answered “no comment” to police questions.
Mr Raja was taken by land ambulance to the Luton and Dunstable Hospital and was transferred to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, where he died on Saturday, November 20.
The youth said he was lawfully defending himself and another person in the house.
He told the jury that Mr Raja had his arm around his neck and he was struggling to breathe.
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Asked by his barrister Naeem Mian KC what he was thinking, he replied: “When he done that it was tighter and tighter and getting harder for me to breath.
“At that point I just wanted him to stop. I just wanted him to stop. I thought I was going to die.”
The judge, Justice Jeremy Johnson KC remanded the youth in custody for sentence on December 12.
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