A 15-year-old boy has been found guilty of the murder of Folajimi Orebiyi in Notting Hill .
The 17-year-old victim, known as Fola, was stabbed in the neck and back on Portobello Road before bleeding to death at the scene on Sunday July 3 last year.
Two youths, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have been on trial at the Old Bailey since January 4 after pleading not guilty to murder charges .
The younger of the two defendants, the 15-year-old, was convicted of murder by a jury on Tuesday (January 24), and will be sentenced on February 10.
The second defendant, a 17-year-old boy who was accused of encouraging the 15-year-old to carry out the attack, was acquitted and sobbed uncontrollably as he was led from the dock by officers.
Fola’s family quietly held hands and wept in court as the verdicts were delivered.
The victim had gone to an estate on Portobello Road, near the historic famous street market , expecting a fist fight to settle a long-running dispute.
But he was ambushed and stabbed, dying a short while later on the street in front of horrified passers-by .
Prosecutor Tim Cray had said the events surrounding the murder centred on the area around Portobello Road, close to where the victim lived.
He said: “The cause of the trouble that led to the stabbing seems to have been trivial, compared to the harm that came from it.”
Witness Mark Gettleson describes the aftermath of the stabbing
In the weeks before, one of Fola’s friends had a fight with the 15-year-old defendant and insults were hurled, he said.
Mr Cray said: “On the Sunday night, Fola and his friends ran into the defendants and their friends near the Portobello Road.
“Fola thought that the dispute was going to be sorted out by a fist fight and they all went to a location off the main roads.”
But Fola did not know that the 15-year-old was armed with a knife which “took this incident up to a whole different league of trouble”, Mr Cray said.
He told jurors: “It turned out that this wasn’t so much a fight as an ambush where, within seconds, Fola was singled out and stabbed to death.”
The younger defendant was accused of striking the fatal wound to Fola’s neck.
He ran away and disposed of the knife as well as clothes he was wearing, jurors were told.
Following their arrests, the 17-year-old denied carrying out the stabbing and said the other youth had the knife.
The 15-year-old denied involvement.
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