Ian Kirwan, 53, was stabbed to death in March last year.
A 15-year-old has been convicted of the murder of a software engineer, whom he stabbed in the chest during a fight in an Asda supermarket in the UK.
Ian Kirwan, 53, called out a group of young men who were “messing about” in the bathroom of a store in Redditch, Worcestershire, on March 8 last year, and the group didn’t like it, proceeding to attack him.
Birmingham Crown Court cleared three other youths – two aged 14 and one aged 16 – of manslaughter, but found them guilty of violent disorder.
The court also acquitted a fifth boy, aged 16, manslaughter and violent disorder, on the grounds that he was not involved in the fatal confrontation and could not have foreseen it.
Kirwan, an artificial intelligence engineer by profession, was stabbed at 7:19 p.m. and died less than an hour before he reached the hospital, the court said, in a trial that lasted ten weeks.
He was an “unfortunate member of the public in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the magistrates continued.
The young man convicted of murder, who appeared in court by video conference, admitted to stabbing Kirwan, but had little or no reaction during the reading of his verdict.
According to the court the boy claimed that he was suffering from mental disturbance at the time of the murder. Something that the magistrates would come to accept, arguing, however, that he was influenced at the time by a behavioral disorder.