Pictured: Ex-public schoolboy cleared of murdering friend Yousef Makki

The rugby-playing ex-public schoolboy who stabbed his friend Yousef Makki in the heart can be named for the first time.

Joshua Molnar, previously referred to only as ‘Boy A’, knifed 17-year-old Yousef during a fight in Hale Barns on March 2.

He was cleared of both murder and manslaughter following a four-week trial at Manchester Crown Court in July after claiming to have accidentally inflicted the fatal wound in self-defence after Yousef pulled a knife on him.

Because he was 17 at the time, the media was banned from publishing any details which may have led to his identification.

However, he can now be named following an application to lift the restriction by The Sunday Times ahead of Molnar’s 18th birthday on Tuesday.

Molnar was handed a 16-month detention and training order after pleading guilty to possessing a flick knife.

One detective described the two defendants as ‘rich kids who have never had to live in the real world’.

Molnar had been at one time a pupil at Ellesmere College, a £33,000-a-year boarding school in Shropshire, where Latin is still taught and its alumni include former England rugby union captain Bill Beaumont, the current chairman of World Rugby, and Hugh Grosvenor, the seventh Duke of Westminster.

He starred in the school rugby union first XV, playing at number eight before leaving with six GCSEs.

His time in the sixth form at Wilmslow High School, a state school, came to an end during his A level studies.

Sources say cannabis was found in his Hugo Boss bag he had taken into school, and he was subsequently withdrawn from there by mutual agreement.

But despite growing up in a wealthy, low-crime village in Cheshire, jurors heard Molnar became fixated with knives and lived out ‘idiotic fantasies’ of being a middle-class gangster.

He, Yousef and a third youth, ‘Boy B’ who still cannot be identified, had all been smoking cannabis together before the latter suggested getting £45 more from a dealer.

Prosecutors claimed the plan was to rob the dealer when he arrived, but Molnar and the second defendant were both cleared of attempted robbery.

Jurors heard Molnar was ‘jumped’ at the meeting point, prompting Yousef and the other boy to flee and leave Molnar to take a beating.

That attack was then the catalyst for the subsequent argument between the pals and the fatal stabbing of Yousef.

Molnar’s mother, Stephanie, said in a statement that her son ‘will have to live with the responsibility of his role in this for the rest of his life’.

‘The events of that night were a tragedy,’ she said.

‘These were three friends going out on a Saturday. They should all still be here to lead fulfilling lives but they are not.’

She added: ‘There were no winners in this case.

‘We fully support all the positive steps to celebrate Yousef’s life and anything positive in the future that can come from this tragedy is something we would welcome and contribute to in whatever way possible.’

A pre-inquest hearing into the death of Yousef Makki is scheduled for October 18 at Manchester Coroner’s Court.

Molnar will be released from custody next March.