A teenager stabbed a 15-year-old boy and knifed his girlfriend in the chest as they waited for the bus in a horror attack in Liverpool, a court has heard. The suspect, who is also 15, was said to have carried out the “premeditated” attack in retaliation for a previous incident involving his friend being struck in the head with a metal pole.
The earlier attack was a “catalyst” for the onslaught of violence, Liverpool Crown Court heard, with the youth withdrawing a knife from his waistband before approaching his victim “from his blindside” on Whitefield Drive in Kirby on April 30, 2025.
He repeatedly stabbed the 15-year-old boy with the weapon and also injured the 14-year-old girl after she tried to intervene, the court was told. The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appeared in court to face charges including attempted murder in the Merseyside city on Tuesday. The boy and girl were hospitalised after the incident but have since “made good recoveries”.
A jury was shown CCTV of the attack as the trial got underway, the Liverpool Echo reports, depicting the defendant, then aged 14, and another teenager approaching the bus stop wearing tracksuits with their hoods up.
A boy waiting at the shelter was then shown picking up a bottle from the ground and confronting the second teenager while shouting: “What? What? What?”
It was then that the defendent could be seen “circling behind him, approaching from his blindside” and pulling a bladed weapon from his waistband before stabbing his victim, who was videoed falling to the floor while screams sounded around him.
The altercation followed an earlier incident, which involved the injured boy throwing a metal pole at another friend of the defendant, the court heard, leaving him in need of hospital treatment for a cut to the forehead.
The defendant reportedly returned home after the initial incident before receiving a 45 second phone call from a different friend, whom he met around five minutes before they were seen approaching the bus stop.
“The prosecution say that whatever happened at the bus shelter was not a sudden reaction to what happened [previously],” Arthur Gibson told the jury during the prosecution’s opening. “This is 25 minutes later. This had been thought out. [The defendant] came at him from behind. The prosecution says that, when you look closely, you will be able to see him producing the knife from his waistband.”
Mr Gibson added that the attack victim was stabbed twice in the back before falling to the ground, at which point the defendant “stood over him and stabbed him three more times”. He then “pushed past” two girls who “tried to get between” him and the victim before delivering a further three knife blows. The victim’s girlfriend then got “inbetween” the two boys and the knife was “plunged into her chest” before the boy was also stabbed “several more times”.
The defendant and his friend reportedly ran away from the scene and he was arrested at his home address shortly after 9.30pm on the same day.
“The blows themselves were aimed at [the victim’s] chest area, either from the front or the back, where his vital organs were situated,” Mr Gibson said. “We say that he must have known he had already caused him serious injury after those first blows, but he continued to do so.
“We, the prosecution, say that there is only really one reason why you continue to stab someone so many times. That is because your intention is not solely to cause them serious harm, it is to kill.”
The defendant, who is represented by Julian Nutter, denies charges of attempted murder of the boy and wounding with intent against the girl. He has pleaded guilty to lesser charges of wounding with intent of the male victim and unlawful wounding of the female.
The trial continues.