Teen guilty of murdering boy lured over Snapchat

LONDON: A teenager has been convicted of murdering a 15-year-old boy who was lured over Snapchat and stabbed to death by two friends, police said.

Michael Irving was persuaded to meet his killers under a “friendly disguise” then knifed in the heart in a street in Stratford, east London, on the evening of September 3 last year, the Old Bailey heard earlier this month.

He died around an hour after the attack having been stabbed four times and found fatally wounded on Tennyson Road, Scotland Yard said. A boy who was 15 at the time previously admitted murder and a youth of 16 was convicted on Thursday, according to the Metropolitan Police. They will be sentenced on April 17.

Jurors had heard a possible motive for the attack was an allegation by the 16-year-old’s sister that she had been touched sexually by Michael when he went to stay. The victim’s mother Leisa told how her son had visited the family for a week but returned early in a “bad mood”, saying the sister had been “horrible and stroppy”.

Shortly after, Michael, from Woolwich, met some people in Eltham, south east London, but again returned home to Plumstead early, the court heard. He is said to have told his mother that some boys had accused him of “touching” the 16-year-old’s sister.

Michael went on: “I told them I had not done this but they said it must be true as she was crying when she said it,” the court heard. He insisted that he had not tried to touch the girl.

Prosecutor Hugh Davies QC said Michael had died from a wound to the heart but other stab injuries suggested multiple use of a knife or knives. He said: “Obvious planning has gone into what they did. Part of that was to get Michael to attend, and for him not to expect to be attacked by them.”

The 16-year-old defendant, of south London, had admitted being present but had denied murder. Davies asserted that even if jurors were not sure he had used a knife to inflict the fatal wound, it was a “classic joint enterprise” case.