A young father was stabbed to death in a red carpet brawl outside upmarket City restaurant Caravaggio because of a row over cloakroom queue-jumping, the Old Bailey heard.
Kabba Kamara, 23, had attended the £20-a-head Red Carpet @ Caravaggio R&B club night for a friend’s birthday when he was stabbed in the abdomen.
Junior Afolayan, 24, is accused of delivering the fatal blow to Mr Kamara during the 3am bust-up outside the Italian restaurant, egged on by brothers Ayodeji and Olatunde Odunyemi.
"There wasn't any trouble during the course of the event in the restaurant until the end," said prosecutor Alan Kent QC.
"It was December and a lot of people all at the same time went to get their coats.
"There was no form of orderly queue around that cloakroom area, and there began to be a little bit of pushing and shoving.
"It's not entirely clear who started it or why it started."
Several eyewitnesses recorded the cloakroom row and the ensuing violence outside on their phones, and it was also caught on the restaurant’s CCTV cameras in Leadenhall Street.
On the footage, played to the court this afternoon, someone shouted "let's go outside" before Afolayan allegedly said "let's go and get the ting".
A bout of "pushing and shoving" broke out on the red carpet outside Caravaggio as the partygoers spilled out of the front door.
During the jostling, a glass Mr Kamara was holding “goes flying”, said Mr Kent, and as the violence escalated, Ayodeji Odunyemi, 24, is seen on camera fighting with Mr Kamara.
His older brother Olatunde 25, then turned to Afolayan and said: "Where's the knife?", the court heard.
Afolayan allegedly ran at Mr Kamara, stabbing him once in the abdomen and causing him to fall back against a street sign.
Mr Kamara, who was born in Sierra Leone, collapsed in the street and died from his injuries just over 24 hours later in hospital.
“Many witnesses didn't see a stabbing, they saw what they described to police as a punch”, said Mr Kent.
“The two groups didn't know each other, it's not as if there was any history between these three defendants and Mr Kamara and any of his friends.
“They just happened to be at the same event that particular night.”
Afolayan, of Wandsworth Road, Clapham, and the Olatunde brothers, both of Loughborough Street, Lambeth, all deny murder and an alternative charge of manslaughter.
The trial continues.
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