A man who fatally stabbed a teenage refugee in the neck in a busy town centre told a court he had been aiming for the boy’s cheek.
Ahmad Al Ibrahim, 16, died after being stabbed by Alfie Franco, 20, whose girlfriend he had brushed past on a crowded shopping street in Huddersfield on April 3.
Prosecutors say Franco “appears to have taken some petty exception” to Ahmad possibly making some “minor contact” with his girlfriend after “innocuously” walking past her.
Leeds Crown Court jurors have heard Franco called Ahmad over to him and, as he approached, the defendant opened the blade on a flick knife he was carrying and drove it into the boy’s neck.
On Tuesday Franco told a trial he stabbed Ahmad because he was “scared something was going to happen to me” and and he “just wanted to cut him so I could get away”.
He told the court Ahmad was “quite aggressive” during the altercation and “kept going for his waist”.
Franco said he was in the West Yorkshire town centre that day for a Jobcentre appointment and that his girlfriend then wanted to buy some eyelash glue.
Asked why he took the knife with him, he said: “Because I’ve been in altercations and heard things that happen in town. I just wanted to have it with me… to keep me safe.”
After viewing a CCTV clip of him and his girlfriend walking and eating ice cream together minutes before the stabbing, Franco said: “I was feeling quite happy… The meeting at the Jobcentre went well.”
He said as the couple were walking around “a lad” (Ahmad) turned around and looked at his girlfriend and at him before saying: “Do you have a problem?”
Franco said he did not know what had happened but that the boy “came off as aggressive” and assumed either he or his girlfriend had “pissed him off”.
He told jurors: “I felt like something was going to happen. Usually when someone says that in that tone, they mean something.
“At the start I was a bit confused and as it kept going on I was a bit frightened. It escalated from there.”
Franco said Ahmad’s friend tried to grab hold of him, but he “shrugged his arm off”.
He told the court: “He started walking towards me in quite a fast pace… I thought he was going to attack me.
“It was his body language. He kept going for his waist and was putting his hood over his face and it was intimidating to me. He was coming to do something.”
Asked how he responded, Franco said: “I reacted… I stabbed him in the neck.”
He told the court he took the knife out of his waistband and extended his arm, but was aiming for Ahmad’s cheek.
He said: “I just wanted to cut him so I could get away. He was coming at me in that way, I just wanted it to stop.”
He said when he was leaving the scene of the stabbing, “I was not in a good state. I was frightened, confused, I was feeling a lot of mixed emotions”.
Franco said he left the town centre and went home but decided to hand himself in at a police station 10 minutes later, telling the court: “I just thought it was the only option.
“I had to hand myself in, it was the right thing to do.”
He said at that point he knew he had cut Ahmad but did not realise how serious his injury was, and “thought it was just an altercation”.
The court heard Franco was born in Huddersfield but moved to South Africa with his family as a baby, returning at the age of 13.
He said South Africa was “a beautiful place but it is quite dangerous”, telling the court his family’s home was burgled “at least once or twice a week” and that he had been mugged “countless times” but never experienced violence because he always handed his possessions over.
Franco said when he returned to Huddersfield as a teenager he was bullied because of his accident and beaten up at school.
He told jurors he was stabbed in his hand when he was 17, and cut in the face during an incident last October.
After Ahmad’s death, his family said he came to the UK from Syria after being injured in a bombing to live with his uncle and dreamed of becoming a doctor, “wanting to heal others after all he had endured”.
They said: “He chose to come to the UK because he believed in the values of human rights, safety, and dignity… He had just begun settling into his new life with his uncle, adjusting to a new language, a new home, and a future he was excited to build.
“Ahmad was kind, gentle, and carried so much promise. Losing him has left an unimaginable emptiness in our hearts.
“We never thought that the place he saw as a safe haven would be where his life would end.”
Franco denies murder but has admitted a charge of possessing a knife in a public place.
The trial continues.
