Boy accused of stabbing Ava White to death ‘just wanted to frighten her’
He said thought Ava was a boy and he was scared she was going to 'jump' him.
The boy on trial for stabbing a 12-year-old girl to death at a Christmas market said he pulled a knife on her because he was scared she was going to jump him.
The 14-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told Liverpool Crown Court ‘I promise, I didn’t mean to hit her’ as he gave evidence over videolink on Thursday.
The jury has been told he claims he stabbed Ava in self-defence after an altercation in Liverpool city centre on the evening of November 25 last year.
The incident allegedly happened after the schoolgirl demanded he delete a Snapchat video he had taken of her and her friends ‘messing around’.
The court was previously played a 20-send clip showing Ava running towards the boy, before getting stabbed in the neck.
Prosecutor Charlotte Newell QC told the court Ava did not ‘inflict any violence upon him greater than a push, nor did she produce or have any weapon.’
But the boy’s reaction was ‘to thrust a knife into the neck of this unarmed child with what a pathologist determined was moderate force — the force of a firm punch’.
Now, the defendant has said this was the point he thought he was going to get ‘jumped’.
The boy claims he heard one of the kids in Ava’s group say: ‘Delete the f***ing video now or I’m going to stab you’.
He also insists Ava told the group: ‘Shall we just jump him now cause I feel like it’.
The defendant, who cannot be named as a minor, told the court: ‘I think Ava said my name. I looked and then she was coming towards me and she was like “delete the f***ing video now, lad” and I was like “get out of my face”.
‘She grabbed me there and I have ran backwards and I think I got my knife out then and kept on running backwards.
‘I was just trying to get her away because I was scared.’
He said he had wanted to ‘frighten her away’ and did not intend to cause any injury.
He told the court he thought Ava was a boy and he did not know if she was ‘in possession of a weapon’.
After the stabbing, the defendant ran away from the scene and dumped his phone, coat and knife.
He then took a cheerful-looking selfie with his friends – when they went to a shop to buy butter for crumpets.
Asked what mood he was in at that time, the teenager said: ‘In an alright mood at that time because I didn’t really know what had happened.’
He insisted that he had run away from Ava’s body because he was still scared and had not realised he had hurt her.
The boy claims he left his coat in a garden, not in the wheelie bin where it was found by police, because he was scared of being identified.
Asked why he got rid of his phone, he said: ‘Because they always take my phone. I have had a few phones took when I was in the police station.’
‘I was scared I was going to go to jail,’ he added.
The boy originally tried to tell police his friend had stabbed Ava. But he later told his legal team where he had left the knife that was used.
He explained why he eventually came clean about this: ‘Because I’m telling the truth and I didn’t mean to do it.’
When his own lawyer asked him whether he meant to stab Ava, he said: ‘No, I promise you.’
The boy went on to tell the prosecution he was carrying a knife in the first place because ‘he thought he was big’.
The teenager was asked why he did not explain that he was scared and simply defending himself in the original police interview, and he asnwered: ‘Because I was 14, I didn’t know the difference between stuff and I was just scared to be honest.’
He denies murder and an alternative charge of manslaughter.
The trial continues.
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