The boy accused of murdering Alfie Lewis has told a jury: “I was just trying to protect my own life.”
Alfie, 15, was stabbed in front of scores of school children and their parents, in Leeds on November 7, last year. A jury has been told he was stabbed twice with a 13cm kitchen knife - the fatal wound piercing his heart.
The defendant , who was 14 at the time of the incident, denies his murder and is standing trial at Leeds Crown Court. Giving evidence on Monday, the boy said he didn’t mean to kill Alfie but was "scared" of the “violent” teen.
Now aged 15, he claimed he believed Alfie was going to "kill" him after the victim had tried to rob him of fireworks on Halloween. The defendant said he had taken a kitchen knife from his home and stored it in the waistband of his school trousers and some joggers.
Alfie was just 15 when he died (Leeds Live/MEN Media)Describing what happened the day of the stabbing, the defendant said: “I saw Alfie walking down towards me... and that's when I froze.
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“That’s when I pulled out the knife from my waistband and I turned to face Alfie but I had the knife down by my side and Alfie saw the knife. I took the knife out to scare him away because he was walking towards me, speed walking and that’s when I thought he was going to attack me.
“It was clear that I had a knife, you could see it…So he stopped and then he looked down at my knife and then looked back at me and said; ‘What you going to do with that?’” He said Alfie seemed “surprised” and “almost as if he was about to laugh as well”.
“I didn’t say anything. He then put his right hand down in his trousers and with his left hand he tried to grab my jacket," the defendant claimed. "Once he’d done that I had taken a step back and that’s when I had swung the knife…”
Tributes left for Alfie (PA)He demonstrated to the jury how he moved the knife from his right shoulder down to the level of his stomach. But he insisted he only did it to “keep him away”.
“I just swung it to hit the air. I didn't mean to harm Alfie or touch him," he said. He told the court he believed that was the knife wound that "hurt" Alfie. "I did it to stop him getting any closer. I thought he was going to grab my jacket and pull out a knife from his trousers and start stabbing me," he said.
“I remember I brought the knife back to my side and Alfie threw himself backwards and started kicking up in the direction of the knife. I remember him shouting something but I don’t remember what he was saying.
"Half his body was on the pavement and half on the road. He was kicking up towards me (towards the knife) which was just by my side.”
When his barrister, Nicholas Lumley KC, asked how Alfie got stabbed in the leg, he said: “I’m guessing it was when he was kicking up towards me. There was no point where the knife went near him when he was on the ground.”
Asked if he intended to kill Alfie, he said: “I didn’t even intend to hurt him or injure him, I was just trying to keep him back from getting towards me. Once I realised he couldn't hurt me any more, that's when I started running."
He said it was then the "knife dropped" from his hand. His defence barrister, referring to CCTV seen by the court, said “time and again the jury saw you were looking back.” The accused replied: “I hadn't known Alfie had been injured. I thought he was going to come after me again, so I was looking back to check if he was close to me or not.”
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Asked about witnesses claims he had “grinned” and “smirked” after Alfie was stabbed he said: “No, That never happened.” He said: “I was just scared. I was just trying to get away from that situation as fast as I could.”
When his barrister said 'some might suggest you should have done that in the first time', he replied: “By the time I’d seen him he was already relatively close to me…I’d frozen. I didn’t think I had any other choice but to pull the knife out. I didn't think about it in the moment everything happened so quickly I was just trying to protect my own life.”
He said he then “just went home normally”. Asked about why the knife had been painted black, he said that had happened some time earlier when he was messing around with his cousins.
The knife, he said, had been used in the garden by his mum to dig out weeds before it was washed and put back in the drawer. Mr Lumley said to the court: “We know police did come and find you and you were taken to a police station and interviewed. Had you ever been interviewed by the police before?”
To which the defendant replied: “That was the first time I'd ever been arrested or in trouble or anything. Never had to speak to a solicitor, a barrister or nothing. I was just shocked and I was scared at the same time."
The court heard how the defendant used to play football with Alfie in the park but stopped mixing with him, after he started to get a “reputation”. The defendant said: “Alfie started to build a reputation for himself so I didn’t want to associate myself with him so I removed his number from the phone I had at the time…
“So I stopped going to the park with him and I removed him from my social medias as well… At the time there was a lot of people who did not want to associate themselves with Alfie because of what he was doing and how he was treating other people.”
He claimed Alfie had got into a fight with one lad and “stomped on his head and he was unconscious” adding: “He was violent at times.” Of the encounter with Alfie on halloween, he claimed Alfie “pulled up his hooded top and said ‘give me the bag...'
“When he’s done that I could see the handle of what I thought to be a weapon. I didn’t say anything. I just stood there...I turned around and started running because I didn't want to get attacked by Alfie. I was running off and he chased after me.”
The defendant said after about 300 metres he escaped from Alfie who said to him: ‘Watch when I catch you!’" He told the court the next time he met Alfie was the day of the stabbing.
Mr Lumley asked him what he thought of Alfie’s threat on Halloween. “I thought that he was going to kill me when he saw me," he told the court. When asked if he had ever carried a knife before, he told the court: “No, the 7th November was the first time I’d ever carried a knife.”
The trial continues.
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