A 17-year-old who stabbed his drug dealer boss in an attempt to get out of the crime world has been jailed for two years and nine months.
Elijah Cowles knifed the 23-year-old dealer twice in the stomach on July 11 last year, leaving his victim critically wounded and needing hospital treatment.
The victim needed life-saving surgery after the stabbing before he was transferred to a critical trauma ward.
While he was in hospital he suffered a life-changing heart attack which has left him with permanent brain damage but a court heard this week this was not a direct result of the attack by Cowles.
Robert Underwood, prosecuting, told Derby Crown Court: “Elijah Cowles was 17 at the time of the offence.
“He was in the employment of the victim, who was responsible for running a drugs line and the defendant was employed in his capacity as a drug runner.
“It appears that he wished to stop doing the drug running and simply wanted to concentrate on college studies. That was not met with approval by the victim.
“This defendant had been arrested and spoken to by police in relation to drug-dealing matters and it followed that the victim decided to ascertain from the defendant what he had said to the police and that seemed to be the source of a dispute between two of them.
“There followed between the victim and defendant a series of messages and voicemails which can be characterised as being threats and it is against that background that we move to the day in question.”
There was no CCTV of the incident but Cowles was spoken to on July 12, when he gave “no comment” answers in interview, according to Derbyshire Live.
The prosecution said that Cowles, of Springfield Road, Chaddesden, used “excessive self-defence” and acknowledged that he was “very concerned to keep his mother free of any potential violence”.
Speaking to defence barrister James Horne, Judge Shaun Smith QC said: “He was being trafficked.
“I do genuinely feel that having looked at the victim’s personal statement, not how I would normally look at it, this case is very, very unusual.
“Very often in life someone comes across an extremely unusual set of circumstances and while they don’t give him an excuse for what he did, the reality is that it seems to me that all the factors in this case, unusually, point in his favour.
“Seldom have I seen a case where the mitigating features are so substantial in the way in which they reduce the overall sentence.”
Cowles was sentenced to two years and nine months in custody having earlier pleaded guilty to one count of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
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