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A person has been given a life sentence with a lowest sentence of 23 years for the homicide of a young Syrian asylum seeker after the boy passed his partner in the center of Huddersfield.

Trial Hears Details of Deadly Altercation

Leeds crown court was told how Alfie Franco, aged 20, knifed the teenager, 16, soon after the young man walked by Franco’s girlfriend. He was found guilty of homicide on the fourth day of the week.

The teenager, who had escaped conflict-ridden the city of Homs after being wounded in a bombing, had been living in the local community for only a few weeks when he met Franco, who had been for a meeting at the job center that day and was going to buy cosmetic adhesive with his female companion.

Details of the Assault

The trial heard that the accused – who had used weed, a stimulant drug, a prescription medication, ketamine and a painkiller – took “a trivial issue” to the boy “harmlessly” going past his partner in the street.

CCTV footage showed the defendant saying something to the victim, and summoning him after a quick argument. As the youth approached, the attacker deployed the weapon on a switchblade he was concealing in his pants and thrust it into the victim's neck.

Verdict and Sentencing

Franco denied murder, but was judged guilty by a trial jury who considered the evidence for about three hours. He confessed to having a knife in a public area.

While sentencing the defendant on last Friday, the presiding judge said that upon seeing Ahmad, Franco “singled him out and drew him to within your proximity to attack before ending his life”. He said his statement to have spotted a blade in the boy's clothing was “a lie”.

The judge said of Ahmad that “it is a testament to the doctors and nurses trying to save his life and his determination to live he even made it to the hospital alive, but in truth his wounds were unsurvivable”.

Family Reaction and Message

Reading out a statement drafted by the victim's uncle the family member, with help from his family, Richard Wright KC told the judges that the teenager’s father had suffered a heart attack upon learning of the incident of his boy's killing, leading to an operation.

“It is hard to express the impact of their heinous crime and the influence it had over the whole family,” the testimony said. “The victim's mother still weeps over his clothes as they remind her of him.”

He, who said Ahmad was dear to him and he felt ashamed he could not protect him, went on to declare that the teenager had thought he had found “the land of peace and the fulfilment of dreams” in the UK, but instead was “brutally snatched by the pointless and random violence”.

“In my role as his uncle, I will always carry the guilt that he had traveled to England, and I could not keep him safe,” he said in a statement after the sentencing. “Our beloved boy we love you, we miss you and we will continue always.”

Background of the Teenager

The trial was told the teenager had travelled for a quarter of a year to reach the UK from his home country, stopping in a refugee centre for young people in Swansea and going to school in the Welsh city before relocating to his final destination. The boy had dreamed of becoming a physician, motivated partly by a hope to look after his mother, who suffered from a persistent condition.