The Murder of Ben Kinsella

Ben Kinsella was 16 years old and celebrating the end of his GCSEs when he fled from a fight in Islington, North London. Unlike his friends, Ben stopped running and was stabbed 11 times in just 5 seconds.

The perpetrators are Juress Kika, 19, Jade Braithwaite, 20, and Michael Alleyne, 18, all from London.

The attack occurred because earlier in the evening Braithwaite claimed he had been 'disrespected' by a wrong glance from someone in Ben's group of friends.

Despite the fact that these three men chose a slightly built white boy to kill for the slight, when it was acknowledged he had not been part of it, the words 'hate crime' and 'racist' were not mentioned once.

All of the men in question had previous convictions; at the time of Ben's murder, Kika was on the run from the police over a robbery nine days earlier in which a man had been stabbed. Alleyne was under a 'supervision order' for drug-dealing after being released early from a jail sentence.

The men were caught after being bugged by the police - all attempted to target and intimidate witnesses:

In one tape the men can be heard gloating about how little evidence the police had. In another, sometimes laughing and joking, they compared notes about the investigation.

In one excerpt Kika appears to recall the moment that he attacked Ben. Referring to it as “the madness”, he said: “See when it happened, yeah. Like boom, it was like a kinda quick ting. Like boom. Went down the road, come back up. Boom, boom. Finished. Boom. Ghost. You get what I’m saying?”

He then added that he believed that the only witnesses to the attack could have been “the people from the houses that were watching on the road. Know what I’m saying?”

They then try to identify the “snitch” (informant) from their “endz” (neighbourhood) who had named them as the killers. Meanwhile Kika claimed that “someone should sort out” a man who ran the council’s CCTV cameras that filmed them running from the murder scene.

Despite all of this, the men were given life with a minimum of 19 years each.

From the BBC:

Sentencing, the Common Serjeant of London, Judge Brian Barker, told the defendants: "Your behaviour generates outrage in all right-minded people and your blind and heartless anger defies belief.

"He had in front of him a lifetime of promise.

"You have taken all that away from him in a brutal, cowardly and totally unjustified attack."

The judge said the crime was aggravated by the fact that they picked on "an obviously younger and smaller lone victim", the judge added.

This case has prompted a lot of soul searching about youths who carry knives. 28 other youngsters died of stab wounds in 2008.

What people don't seem to realise is that having a knife is not the problem in itself - it is not being afraid of the consequences of using it.

Whilst we live in a country which sees punishing violent criminals as evil and wrong, tragedies such as this one will continue to occur.

Ben Kinsella was robbed of his life not by a knife, but by the people who were brandishing it and their utter contempt for human life, the law and anything other than their own inflated egos.

Until we wake up to that reality, no amount of hand wringing will make things any better.