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‘Killer left smiling after knife attack’
Teenager stabbed in row with stranger, jury told
A KILLER was smiling as he jogged away after stabbing a student, a jury heard.
Witnesses saw him “looking smug” moments after he plunged a knife into the chest of a teenager who collapsed dying at a busy junction at the Angel, the Old Bailey was told.
Ahmet Gomulu, 18, had his dog, a Staffordshire terrier, trotting beside him as he made his getaway, said Edward Brown, QC, prosecuting.
Nassirudeen Osawe, known as Nass, was just five days short of his 17th birthday when he died in broad daylight on the crowded pavement from a wound to the heart. He had also been stabbed in the leg.
The A-level student, from Grosvenor Avenue, Highbury, was shopping for electrical equipment with two friends when they clashed with Gomulu at a bus stop.
Gomulu, 18, from Stoke Newington, was carrying a flick knife when he began rowing with them, the court was told. They were strangers to him, said Mr Brown.
“Had he not been carrying a knife Nass would be alive today,” the prosecutor added.
Gomulu denies murder on December 27 last year and also denies stabbing and wounding a friend of Nass’s.
He claimed the others had been “staring” at him at the bus stop and he acted in self-defence when they tried to steal his dog. He maintained he took the knife from one of the three friends.
“I was in fear for my life and acted in desperation. I was not aiming to stab anyone” he added.
The victim’s mother left court in distress as the “dreadful injury” to her son was described. The three-inch deep wound sliced through a rib before entering the heart. He also had a knife wound more than an inch deep to the leg.
His friend went to University College Hospital in Bloomsbury with a stab wound to the stomach. It was not life threatening.
The jury heard that passers-by saw a brawl develop in Upper Street, with chairs from outside a pub being hurled along with a traffic cone.
Gomulu had got off a bus and asked the three friends: “What are you looking at?”
He then produced a knife and flicked open the blade, said the prosecutor.
A community policewoman rushed to the aid of the injured teenager “and took him in her arms as he collapsed,” said Mr Brown.
Two women in Duncan Street watched Gomulu pass them smiling as he headed towards the canal, the court heard.
Police later recovered a knife from the canal, the jury was told.
The case continues. |
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