Boy, 17, found guilty of stabbing 15-year-old Khayri Mclean to death
A teenager has been found guilty of murdering a 15-year-old boy as he walked home from school in Huddersfield.
Khayri Mclean was stabbed to death in what prosecutors described as a ‘well-planned and targeted’ attack outside North Huddersfield Trust School last year.
He was ambushed by two teenagers, 17 and 15, who plunged a knife into Khayri’s heart at around 2:45pm on 21 September.
Leeds Crown Court heard the 17-year-old defendant, who can’t be named, was one of two teenagers who attacked the victim after lying in wait for him wearing balaclavas and carrying knives.
After five hours of deliberation, the defendant showed no emotion at all as the jury read out their guilty verdict.
His co-accused, 15, pleaded guilty to murder last week.
Khayri had just left the school on Woodhouse Hall Road with his friends when the two ‘charged’ towards him aggressively after shouting his name, the court heard.
One eyewitness said one of Khayri’s attackers leapt through the air with a 30cm blade ‘like some ninja’.
The 15-year-old stabbed Khayri in the chest with the 30cm blade, piercing through the boy’s ribs, lungs and heart.
Khayri fell to the ground and was ‘defenceless on his back’ when the 17-year-old defendant stabbed him in the lower leg.
Prosecutors described how the teens were ‘encouraging and supporting each other to carry out that attack’.
As Khayri lay there bleeding, a passing doctor battled to save the boy’s life as his shaken teachers looked on.
The two teens then crossed a nearby field and changed their clothing within an 11-minute CCTV blindspot.
The older boy denied murder, telling jurors he went to school with the co-accused and waited in an alleyway for a student they believed smashed his mother’s front window.
The defendant said he intended to have a ‘fist fight’ with the boy and he didn’t realise he had knifed Khayri in the leg until later.
He claimed he was running with the weapon in his hand and swung at Khayri’s leg as he thought he was trying to ‘kick me to the floor’.
Both teens will be sentenced at a later date.
Khayri’s girlfriend, Shyana James, 16, said she was speaking to him on Snapchat only moments before he died.
‘He would drop anything for you and he’d do absolutely anything for anyone,’ she said last September.
‘He was going home to get changed then he was going to come to mine.
‘He was the love of my life. He was just the best person I knew.’
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