Five years for knife fight killer

Boduka Louis Mudianga studied art and design at Southgate College

A teenager has been sentenced to five years youth detention for stabbing a student to death "instinctively".

Boduka Louis Mudianga, 18, from Enfield, north London, was attacked when he became involved in a fight in nearby Edmonton in January.

Kevin Lewis, 18, from Edmonton, was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter at the Old Bailey.

Judge Peter Beaumont said: "If you had not had a knife that day, a young man would not be dead."

Mr Mudianga, known among friends as Louis Boduka, was an art and design student at Southgate College.

'Gang warfare'

The court heard how Mr Mudianga got off a bus with a friend in Edmonton on 21 January.

After a shout of "That's him!" from the bus, a clash followed in which Mr Mudianga threw a punch at a friend of Lewis's.

Lewis's lawyer said he "over-reacted" to an attack on a friend

Lewis then "instinctively" stabbed Mr Mudianga with a three-inch flick knife, he told the court. The teenager died from a single stab wound to the chest.

Lewis was later arrested in Northamptonshire, on the same day that an aeroplane ticket to Kingston, Jamaica, had been booked in his name.

Defending, Nigel Rumfitt QC said there was "a background of gang warfare" in the area where Lewis lived.

"He was minding his own business when he was set upon by the young man who died and his companion," Mr Rumfitt said. "He over-reacted to that attack."

Lewis, who was 17 at the time of the attack, was sentenced to five years' youth detention.

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