A 16-year-old boy has been given at least a 17-year sentence for the murder of a 17-year-old boy a few hundreds yards from Brighton station last autumn.
At Lewes Crown Court this afternoon (Thursday 2 May), the judge Sir Adam Constable, known as Mr Justice Constable, ordered that Armin Mehdikhani-Sarvejahani be detained at His Majesty’s pleasure.
His mother broke down in tears after he was taken down from the dock to the cells as members of her family tried to calm and console her.
Mehdikhani-Sarvejahani, of Watling Court, Butts Road, Southwick, stabbed Mustafa Momand in Queen’s Road, Brighton, as hundreds of people made their way to Brighton station at about 5pm on Thursday 5 October last year.
The judge told Mehdikhani-Sarvejahani that he would serve a minimum of 17 years before he could be considered for parole.
The boy was found guilty of murder by a jury at Brighton Crown Court on Monday 4 March after a two-week trial.
He was also convicted of threatening a neighbour, Stephen Slark, with a knife or machete by Portslade station a few months earlier.
The judge said: “This tragic case serves as a stark reminder of the very real dangers that await young people who get involved in dealing drugs, of the appalling way in which young lives spiral very quickly into effective servitude for the financial benefit of others and become treated as expendable – and most clearly of the devastating consequences of ever more frequent knife crime.”
Very sad for all concerned. One has to ask tho – had he been convicted and sent away for the armed threat “a few months before” would he have not been available to kill somebody. The constipated justice system does seem to have consequences.
Very sad for all the victims, I agree. And this person’s life is effectively over – they’ll be institutionalized within the system, and more likely than not, according to data, they’ll be a repeat offender.
What’s puzzling here is that 5 years on from the murder of Abdul Deghayes in a drug related feud where large sums of drugs and cash were involved and confiscated by the police, we have another murder of Mo Momand outlined in court as carried out over a drug debt owed to a relative of Abdul Deghayes – Zak Deghayes.
Threats of harm to Mo Momand were reported to the police well in advance of the murder with his parents being threatened too.
I wonder what exactly the police policy is on these individuals?
Or is low level of police staff the problem?