the times | Wednesday May 25 2022 5
News
Boy, 14, guilty of
murdering girl, 12,
in Snapchat row
wanted to speak to him, he told her he
was playing a video game.
Charlotte Newell QC, for the prose-
cution, said: “Knowing he had stabbed
her, his behaviour is of someone who is,
at best, utterly unconcerned; at worst,
rather pleased with himself. His age is
not a defence, he is not a babe in arms.
He was capable of making the decision
to carry a knife [and] deciding to use it
and he was capable of lying about it
over and over and over again.”
Newell said that in the hour before
her death Ava had been having “the
time of her life with her friends”.
A 15-year-old girl told police they had
noticed Boy A with three other boys
filming Ava. She said Ava “flipped”
when the killer shouted: “Look at the
state of youse.”
Another girl, aged 14, said the group
had shared vodka and were “messing
about” when they saw the flash of
phone cameras. She said that she tried
to pull Ava back. “I was saying to leave
it. She was pushing me off her. She was
fuming. She was like, ‘He’s the same size
as me I’ll batter him’.”
The killer admitted stabbing the girl
but denied murder or manslaughter.
He attended the trial via videolink and
was given a fidget toy which the jury
was told could help him concentrate,
because he has ADHD.
He told the court he looked up to see
Ava “coming towards me and she was
like ‘delete the f****** 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 back-
wards. I was just trying to get her away
because I was scared.”
Nick Johnson QC, defending, said
that Ava was among a group of about 12
children who had shared 1.4 litres of
vodka during the evening.
Mrs Justice Yip told Boy A: “I think
you know I can only impose a life sen-
tence, but what I have to do is decide
what the shortest amount of time that
you will have to serve in custody is.”
She remanded him in secure accom-
modation until sentencing on July 11.David Brown
Ava White, who was out with friends, was stabbed in the neck during an altercation. Evidence was collected from the scenePA; IAIN WATTS/LIVERPOOL ECHOBecker moved to prison for
foreigners facing deportation
Matt Dathan Home Affairs Editor
Boris Becker has been transferred to a
prison that is used to accommodate for-
eign criminals, paving the way for him
to be deported as early as next year.
The former world No 1 tennis player
is being detained at HMP Hunter-
combe in the Oxfordshire countryside
near Henley-on-Thames.
He had previously been held at
Wandsworth prison, just two miles
from Centre Court at Wimbledon,
where he won the tournament at the
age of 17 in 1985.
The 54-year-old was jailed for
two-and-a-half years last week for
concealing £2.5 million of assets to
avoid paying money he owed after his
bankruptcy. He will serve half of the full
prison sentence.
He has lived in the UK since 2012 but
is understood not to have British citi-
zenship. He will qualify for automatic
deportation because he is a foreign
national without British citizenship
who has received a prison sentence of
more than 12 months.
His new location emerged after his
lawyer told journalists in Berlin yester-
day: “Boris Becker was transferred to
Huntercombe Prison today. It is a
category C prison, which means it has a
low security level.”
The latest inspection of HMP Hunt-
ercombe in 2017 found that of 197 men
released from the prison, 185 had been
deported immediately.
While the Home Office does not
comment on individual cases, a source
there confirmed that Becker’s sentence
would make him eligible for deporta-
tion under the Borders Act 2007.
Becker could appeal against deporta-
tion by using the Human Rights Act or
applying for the deportation order to be
withdrawn on compassionate grounds.
Article 8 of the Human Rights Act pro-
tects the right to a family life. Becker
has a 12-year-old son, Amadeus, with
his estranged wife Sharley “Lilly” Beck-
er, who he remains close to.A boy aged 14 has been found guilty of
murdering a 12-year-old girl during an
argument over a Snapchat video.
Ava White had confronted the boy
when she saw him filming her and a
group of friends who were out to see the
Christmas lights being switched on in
Liverpool. She died after being stabbed
in the neck at 8.30pm in the city centre
in November last year.
The boy, who can be identified only
as Boy A, admitted stabbing Ava but
claimed that he had acted in self-de-
fence because he felt afraid of her de-
mand to delete the recording. He had
uploaded a short video on Snapchat
showing Ava sitting on the ground sur-
rounded by friends.
The boy, from south Liverpool, put
his head in his hands and wept after a
jury took only two hours and eight min-
utes to convict him at Liverpool crown
court. More than 20 members of Ava’s
family were present.
He had told the court that he wanted
to “frighten her away” because he was
scared she would “jump” him. He
claimed that he had heard one of Ava’s
group threaten to stab his friend if he
did not delete the video.
Ava, a year 8 pupil at Notre Dame
Catholic College in Everton, was given
the peace ambassador award in 2019 by
Colin and Wendy Parry, who set up the
Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Peace Foun-
dation after their son died in the War-
rington IRA bomb in 1993.
CCTV showed Boy A and his friends
after the stabbing in a shop where the
boy took a selfie and the group bought
butter for crumpets. When Boy A’s
mother contacted him because police
Boy A told the court he “got his knife
out” because he was scared of Ava