• Teenager gets eight years for manslaughter after stab attack
• Judge lifts ban on identification in hope of deterring knife crime
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Email Peter Walker and agencies
The Guardian, Friday 5 April 2013 15.55 BST
Junior Nkwelle was stabbed by Cherelle McKenzie-Jackson's boyfriend after a row over football. Photograph: Metropolitan Police/PA
A 14-year-old girl who persuaded her boyfriend to stab a boy who she felt had treated her disrespectfully has been sentenced to eight years detention for manslaughter.
The trial of Cherelle McKenzie-Jackson, from Brixton, south London, was told that her boyfriend, Marc Anthony Tulloch, now 17, almost certainly did not know Junior Nkwelle or have any personal quarrel with him before he stabbed the 15-year-old though the heart in September last year. Junior bled to death on the patch of grass where he had been playing football with his younger brother and friends. Tulloch was ordered to be detained for 10 years after his conviction for manslaughter in September.
McKenzie-Jackson was convicted last month and the judge at the Old Bailey, Richard Hone, used the sentencing hearing to lift a court order barring the identification of her and Tulloch, saying he hoped reporting of the story would be a deterrent to knife crime.
The 14-year-old, described in court as troubled and extremely disrupted with a particularly low IQ, was living with her grandmother on the Loughborough Estate because her mother could not cope with her. The judge noted that she was herself seriously assaulted the previous year and felt a need to assert herself.
On the evening of 27 September she had a row after Junior complained when she walked through the middle of his football kickabout. She "went ballistic", the court heard, telling the teenager she would fetch a knife and get someone to stab him.
She made a series of calls to persuade Tulloch, then 16, to come from his home in nearby Peckham and attack Nkwelle. After he did this McKenzie-Jackson took the murder weapon, which she might have provided herself, back to her home to wash it. The pair were convicted of manslaughter rather than murder as the jury found they had not intended for Nkwelle to be seriously harmed.
Jonathan Turner, QC, prosecuting, told McKenzie-Jackson's trial: "Marc Anthony Tulloch was telephoned by his girlfriend and told to come to the estate to teach Junior Nkwelle a lesson. There had been an argument between her friends and Junior's friends while the football was going on. She thought that Junior had insulted her or been less than respectful to her. She was very angry and determined that he should be punished – indeed stabbed – to put things right."
Tulloch was "encouraged and requested" to stab Nkwelle, he said, adding: "Indeed, to use an old-fashioned phrase, was 'set-up' by her to do this."
Nkwelle's mother, Stella, released a statement saying she could not come to terms with his death. She said: "It doesn't make any sense to me. It happened so quickly and so close to our home. I didn't even know what was going on and I had no chance to help, or see him and say goodbye and tell him how much I love him. By the time I got to him my poor child had bled to death."
She described him as "a kind, friendly boy" who loved football and school.
DCI Charles King of the Metropolitan police said: "This death illustrates the terrible consequences of the casual acceptance that knives have a part to play in minor disputes between young people."
