Yousef Makki was a talented and sporty schoolboy who was stabbed to death in a leafy Greater Manchester village just over three years ago.
Yousef, 17, from Burnage, south Manchester, was knifed in the chest by his pal Joshua Molnar, also then 17, during a confrontation in Hale Barns on March 2, 2019. Just 15 weeks later, former public schoolboy Molnar, now 20, from a wealthy family in Hale, went on trial at Manchester Crown Court charged with murder and manslaughter.
Molnar and another youth involved in the incident, Adam Chowdhary, had led double lives, playing “middle-class gangsters” listening to Drill music, smoking cannabis and carrying knives despite both coming from wealthy Cheshire families and living in a low-crime area, the trial heard.
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Yousef, who had ambitions to go to Oxford University and become a heart surgeon, was awarded a bursary to attend the £12,000-a-year Manchester Grammar School, where Chowdhary was also a pupil and where they became friends. The trial heard Chowdhary had bought two flick knives from an online website, Wish, for himself and Yousef, and took them out that day to impress Molnar.
The lead-up to Yousef’s death has been described as either a drug deal gone wrong or a revenge attack, leading to Molnar being beaten up and his £2,000 bike thrown in a hedge and lost – while Chowdhary fled and Yousef stood by. Molnar and Makki then came to blows and the knives were produced, Molnar said, with Yousef being stabbed in the heart.
A jury acquitted Molnar of both murder and manslaughter after he said acted in self-defence, alleging Yousef pushed and punched him, called him 'pussy' and pulled a flick knife on him first.
The family of Yousef say this is totally out of character and told an inquest into his death last year that he had actually acted as a peacemaker. Molnar admitted possessing the knife which inflicted the fatal injury, as well as lying to police at the scene.
When police arrived at the scene, Molnar was bare-chested, and was using his top to apply pressure to the wound on Yousef's chest until the emergency services arrived at Gorse Bank Road.
In police body-worn camera footage which has been published ahead of the airing of the Channel 4 documentary Killed By A Rich Kid being broadcast tonight (Monday), he is heard telling an officer he "didn't know" what had happened. He said that he'd seen a silver hatchback flee the scene.
Molnar initially said Yousef had walked ahead of him and Adam Chowdhary and that when they turned the corner they saw him fall to the floor. He said they ran over to find Yousef "coughing up blood" before later changing his story. Molnar was sentenced to a 16 month detention order.
Chowdhary, also 17 at the time, who was described by Yousef as his 'best friend' at MGS, was acquitted of perverting the course of justice. However, he was given a four-month detention order after admitting possession of a flick knife.
An inquest into Yousef's death was held at South Manchester Coroner's Court in Stockport last November. Senior Coroner Alison Mutch said she could not safely conclude the death was either unlawful or accidental, instead recording a narrative verdict.
"Yousef died from complications of a stab wound to chest" she said. "The precise circumstances in which he was wounded cannot, on the balance of probabilities, be ascertained" she added.
Yousef's family described the inquest conclusion as 'disgusting' and last month they confirmed they had applied to the High Court for a judicial review to quash the coroner's ruling and seek a new inquest in front of a different coroner.
