Tomasz Oleszak, 14, was stabbed in Gateshead, and a teenager was found guilty of his murder. Tomasz Oleszak was attacked in October and died the next day from an 8cm-deep cut to his chest.
Leighton Amies, now 15, but 14 at the time, claimed he stabbed Tomasz by accident during a gang attack. A jury at Newcastle Crown Court found him guilty of murder and attempting to cause grievous bodily harm to another child whose coat was slashed.
The killer, who did not know Tomasz and lived in a different part of Tyneside, claimed he killed him with a serrated steak knife on October 3.
Tomasz Oleszak Death
Leighton Amies stole a serrated steak knife from his mother’s kitchen on October 3, last year. At his trial, the then-14-year-old admitted to grabbing the silverware from the draining board and putting it in his body warmer as he walked out into the dark autumnal evening. A 14-year-old boy was killed by a teen in a knife attack. Prosecutor Mark McKone questioned him in Newcastle Crown Court about what.
Three hours after Amies left, the knife was stabbed into Tomasz’s chest with “reasonable force,” according to a pathologist. Because he was from another part of Tyneside, he wasn’t familiar with Tomasz or the Springwell neighborhood. Amies stopped on his way home from a dance class to see a friend, a 14-year-old female. He claimed that after the young couple was followed into the park, up to five children attacked him.
Leighton Amies stabbed 14-Yeard Old Tomasz Oleszak
He’d gone to Springwell to meet a 14-year-old girl and was walking her home through Whitehills Nature Park when she told him about a group of teenagers following them. Amies claimed he was punched, kicked, and wrestled to the ground before pulling the knife, but prosecutors claimed he lied about being attacked. After delivering the fatal blow, the killer yelled to the gang, “I’ve wetted your boy,” the court heard.
Prosecutor Mark McKone KC told the jury, “He wanted them to know he had stabbed one of their numbers.” “It was just a brag.” Mr. McKone stated that while the gang was not “blameless” because they considered hitting Amies, he was the “aggressor,” and the only injury he sustained was a minor thumb injury. According to defense attorney Peter Makepeace KC, his client was “flailing out indiscriminately in the act of self-defense.” Jurors learned that Amies hid the knife in a bush before texting a friend that he wanted it “melted.”
According to a previous Police statement, Tomasz’s mother, Kamila, and father, Patryk, as well as Tomasz’s six-year-old sibling, were “devastated beyond words” by his death.
