Guilty: 'Animals' who killed Ben Kinsella

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12 April 2012

Three knife-wielding thugs who stabbed 16-year-old Ben Kinsella to death in a row over "respect" were convicted of his murder today.

Jade Braithwaite, 20, Juress Kika, 19, and Michael Alleyne, 18, face life sentences when they are sentenced tomorrow at the Old Bailey for the killing, which sparked an outcry over London's knife culture.

Ben's sister, the former EastEnders actress Brooke Kinsella, broke down in tears as the jury returned guilty verdicts.

Ben was stabbed 11 times in five seconds as he was out celebrating the end of his GCSEs last June with friends in Islington.

He had left the Shillibeers bar as a trivial row - sparked by a friend of Braithwaite asking one of Ben's group: "What are you staring at?" - spilled out on to the street.

After Braithwaite summoned Kika and Alleyne, they picked out Ben - who had not been involved in the row - and chased him down North Road towards York Way, where he was cornered and stabbed repeatedly.

After Ben's murder - the 17th of a teenager in the capital last year - the Kinsellas launched a campaign against knife crime.

Today police rounded up more than 200 members of gangs, some as young as 11, in a crackdown on knife violence.

Outside court today, Ben's stepfather, George, said: "Our son's only crime was being the last to run away from those animals." He added: "Knife crime is now sadly embedded in the heart of Great Britain, always running the lives of gangs and feral youths. Parents live in fear until their children are safely home. It could be a wrong word, a wrong look or the wrong postcode. In Ben's case, it was something which was nothing to do with him at all."

The three killers all had criminal pasts.

Convicted mugger Alleyne was under a training order having been released from custody for dealing crack cocaine and heroin three months before the murder. He had been freed from a Young Offenders Institution under the supervision of Islington probation service.

Kika was on the run from police after a drug-related robbery and stabbing of a 21-year-old victim.

Brooke Kinsella, 25, who played Kelly Taylor for five years in the BBC TV soap, held hands with her mother Deborah, stepfather and sisters, as the verdicts were returned.

She had described her brother as "not only a beautiful son and brother but a true angel -one of the kindest and gentlest boys God created".

Ben's murder came just weeks after the murders of Harry Potter actor Rob Knox, 18, Jimmy Mizen and Shakilus Townsend, aged just 14.

The Kinsellas launched a website and fund in Ben's memory and Brooke pleaded for anyone with information to come forward to the police.

More than 400 people, many dressed in white as a symbol of peace, marched in protest through Islington, stopping outside Mayor Boris Johnson's house which is close to the murder scene.

The killers were eventually trapped after they revealed crucial evidence in covert recordings.

Prosecutor Nicholas Hilliard QC said Ben was "a boy who had done no harm to anybody" but was murdered just for knowing his friend.

He said Ben's death had "its origins in one of those 'Who are you looking at?' issues [which] years ago might have ended in sharp words but these days ends on a sharp knife".

DCI John Macdonald, the senior investigating officer, described the killers as "three cowards, older and bigger than Ben and armed with knives".

He said: "Ben was the one they grabbed hold of because he didn't run off. Ben was genuinely innocent. He had nothing to do with it.

"He was popular, people knew the family. It materialised out of nothing, out of a stupid non-event in a pub.

"You do wonder about some people's total ignorance. It is social inability to rationalise what's happened, talk things through.

"Braithwaite probably felt he had been embarrassed by younger kids and wanted to take some retribution."

Jurors heard that attempts had been made to destroy and fix evidence and intimidate witnesses.

Mr Hilliard said: "Clothing has gone, the murder weapon or weapons have gone, telephone cards have gone.

"You have heard offers to pay money for false stories, an attempt was made to stop a witness coming to court."

Alleyne and Kika, from Islington, and Braithwaite from Bow, had all denied murder.

Braithwaite, who once coached football at Sobell Leisure Centre in Finsbury Park, told the jury he had been at the scene of the murder, but said he stood and watched as Alleyne repeatedly knifed the victim.

Alleyne claimed Braithwaite inflicted the fatal blows. Kika neither answered police questions nor gave evidence.

Mr Hilliard said that because of their age 15 years should be the starting point for the minimum term they should serve in their life sentences.

The judge, Common Serjeant of London Brian Barker, QC, can raise the number of years as they had used two knives in the streets with an intention to kill, planned the attack together and inflicted 11 wounds, said Mr Hilliard.

Outside court Brooke Kinsella said: "I am overjoyed. It's awful, awful but we got all we needed - it's justice."

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