A teeanger who knifed a 13-year-old boy to death before meeting a friend to play video games has been convicted of murder.
Jahziah Coke was found collapsed in the hallway of the house with three stab wounds – one of which penetrated six inches into his chest and almost severed a rib – a court was told. Paramedics were unable to save him.
A jury today found the boy – who claimed the pair had been involved in a drug-related row – guilty of murder by a majority of 10 to 2, following almost ten hours of deliberations.
The youth, sitting in the well of the court beside his mother, showed no emotion as he watched the verdict being returned by the foreman of the jury.
He is due to be sentenced in June.
The court heard heard the killer, who cannot be identified, left the scene of the murder by scaling garden fences. After emerging onto a road he then caught the first of two buses to the home of a friend.
Prosecutor Kevin Hegarty KC told how Jahziah was found alone in the property at the foot of the stairs last August after a 999 call was made.
‘At the time the call was made Jahziah, a 13-year-old, was bleeding heavily’, the prosecutor said.
‘He had three wounds to his torso. One on his chest and two on his stomach or tummy.
‘And those wounds had been caused by one or more sharp knives. The wound to his chest was approximately 15cm deep – six inches give or take.’
Jahziah Coke, 13, was found collapsed in a hallway after being stabbed to death in Birmingham
The front of a house where Jehziah was found dead, filled with flower and candle tributes to the teenager
The prosecutor said ‘severe force’ was used to inflict that chest wound. ‘It almost completely cut through the sixth rib on his right side’, he added.
Mr Hegarty said that as well as the deep wound to Jahziah’s chest, the boy also suffered two stomach wounds in the attack at the address in Oldbury, West Midlands.
He told jurors: ‘One i(wound) is where the knife has gone in and the other is where the point of the knife has come out, if you can imagine such a thing.’
Forensic evidence, included diluted blood found on a kitchen chair, suggested an attempt had been made to “clean up” something or someone after the killing.
Wolverhampton Crown Court heard that after fleeing the scene, the youth arrived at an address where a friend lived with her mother. The defendant ‘went into (the friend’s) room where they ‘hung out for three hours, playing on a PlayStation and chatting’, the prosecutor said.
The court heard news eventually filtered through to the pair via Snapchat that Jahziah was dead and his alleged killer went on to give the girl and her mother ‘an account of what he said happened that afternoon.’
Mr Hegarty said: ‘The boy claimed there had been a row and a struggle and that Jahziah had tried to stab him.’
The boy claimed to the mother and daughter that he had tried to ‘twist’ his assailant’s arm away from him before Jahziah ‘dropped to the floor’.
Mr Hegarty added: ‘He said he did not know that Jahziah had been stabbed, but nor did he explain how there were two penetrating stab wounds.
Candles, cards, flowers, toys and balloons were left at the house in the West Midlands by friends
Tributes were left outside the house in Oldbury (pictured: flowers and candles left on the doorstep)
‘He claimed it was all an accident and that it shouldn’t have happened.’
The mother urged the teenager to go to police and a taxi was arranged to take him to a police station, the court heard. But Mr Hegarty said that while the youth duly went off in a cab, he ‘didn’t go into any police station’.
The defendant told jurors the 13-year-old victim had picked up a knife and threatened him before a row over ‘missing cannabis’ led to a non-deliberate chest injury.
The youth said he was left ‘hurt and traumatised’ after grabbing Jahziah’s hands – twisting the knife towards the floor – and then seeing blood.
The defendant also said that he did not have the knife in his own hands and dialled 999 to summon paramedics, only leaving the property once he believed Jahziah was dead.
‘He started threatening me with it’, the boy said.
‘He tried to go for me. I was kind of close to him and he came closer.’
Asked by defence counsel Paul Lewis KC what he had done next, the defendant said: ‘Grabbed his hand – I got both of them.
‘I twisted the knife towards the floor.’
The boy said he didn’t know what happened next, adding: ‘I just remember seeing blood and then … yeah … blood on my hands.’
Mr Lewis then asked the teenager what he remembered of how the fatal chest injury had happened.
The youth answered: ‘I don’t know. It all happened too fast.’
Denying that he had deliberately stabbed Jahziah in the chest or that he had taken the knife off him, the boy added that he only realised the 13-year-old had been injured when he started seeing blood.
Jurors were told the youth was arrested three days after the stabbing at an address in Solihull, West Midlands.
A man in his 40s who was also at the address was charged with assisting an offender by harbouring the teenage defendant with intent to impede his apprehension and prosecution.
The man was cleared by the jury his afternoon.
Mr Hegarty told jurors that the ‘knife or knives used (in the attack) had been taken from the murder scene.
At the start of the trial, Mr Hegarty told jurors a second youth had also previously been charged with Jahziah’s murder, but that ‘subsequently, the prosecution offered no evidence’, ending criminal proceedings against him.
After the verdicts, Mrs Justice Tipples thanked jurors for their hard work and attention to the case, and excused the panel from future jury service for life.
The judge told the jurors: “This, as you well know, has been a tragic case in which a 13-year-old child was killed.”
