Trio Given Life Sentences For Ben Kinsella Murder

Three men have been given life sentences for the murder of 16-year-old schoolboy Ben Kinsella.

Juress Kika, 19, Jade Braithwaite, 18, and Michael Alleyne, 20, were yesterday convicted by a jury at the Old Bailey in London.

The three, all from London, were ordered to serve a minimum of 19 years in prison.

Ben, the brother of Eastenders actress Brooke Kinsella, was stabbed 11 times in a north London street, once through the heart.

After sentencing, Brooke Kinsella, who was at the court, said: "It's little more than Ben lived, so it is not really enough."

The teenager had been at a bar with his friends to celebrate the end of their GCSE exams, when a row broke out in Islington, north London, on 29 June last year.

Although Ben was not involved in the fight – and was in fact walking away from the bar - he was chased along the street with other youngsters and stabbed to death when he stopped running.

He was stabbed 11 times in five seconds by the three youths in revenge for a claim that Braithwaite had earlier been "disrespected", the court heard.

After the verdicts were read, it emerged Kika had been on the run from police for 10 days following a robbery in which a man was knifed on 19 June.

Three other youths were arrested, but despite extensive police searches and inquiries, Kika was not found until he was arrested for Ben's murder at a flat in Chadwell Heath, east London, on 30 June.

Meanwhile, Alleyne was being supervised by the local probation team as part of an 18-month detention and training order for drug dealing.

He had been released three months earlier after serving half the sentence in a detention centre.

Sentencing, the Common Serjeant of London, Judge Brian Barker, told the defendants they took part in a "brutal, cowardly and totally unjustified attack".

He added: "Your behaviour generates outrage in all right-minded people and your blind and heartless anger defies belief."

(JM/NS)