15-year-old guilty of murder after stabbing man in Redditch
Ian Kirwan died in an Asda carpark after being stabbed in the heart.
Last updated 18th Jan 2023
A 15-year-old has been convicted of murdering a software engineer after a row in a supermarket toilet in Redditch.
Jurors convicted the teen after hearing how 53-year-old Ian Kirwan was knifed in the heart by the youth - then aged 14 - acting as a part of a masked gang which "terrorised" members of the public in Redditch.
The killer, from Birmingham, travelled with four other boys by train to the Worcestershire town on March 8, last year, where Mr Kirwan was subjected to a minute-long attack near the entrance of an Asda store.
Jurors cleared three of those other youths - two aged 14 and one aged 16 - of murder and manslaughter but found them guilty of violent disorder.
A fifth boy, aged 16, was acquitted of murder, manslaughter and violent disorder, having claimed he was not involved in the fatal confrontation and could not have predicted it.
A ten-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court, was told Mr Kirwan, an artificial intelligence engineer who worked at Jaguar Land Rover's Coventry headquarters, was an "unfortunate member of the public in the wrong place at the wrong time".
All those convicted will be sentenced, at the same court, on February 15.
Background
On 8 March 2022 Ian Kirwan, a software engineer, travelled to the Asda superstore on Jinnah Road, and didn't return home.
During his visit, he went to the store's toilet where he confronted a group of five teenagers.
They had already been seen causing anti-social behaviour elsewhere earlier in the day. In one of the defendant's police interviews, he said the group had talked about going to the town to cause "terror".
The prosecution said witnesses had seen them throwing rubbish and climbing over seats on the train from Birmingham.
There had also been another incident in a local nail bar on their way to Asda.
When Mr Kirwan came across them, he challenged them, asking why they were "messing" around.
Then in the car park, Ian Kirwan bumped into the group outside, he confronted them again and a scuffle broke out. In this scuffle, Mr Kirwan was stabbed in the heart.
The 53-year-old was then assisted by an off-duty nurse, but was pronounced dead at the scene.
The teenager admitted to stabbing Ian Kirwan, yet claimed diminished responsibility due to his neuro development conditions. Throughout the case, the prosecution accepted this but alleged "what was operating on the youth's mind at the time of the killing was a behaviour disorder" which they believed isn't the same.
The other question throughout the case was whether or not the group of five was acting together when the boy stabbed Mr Kirwan in the heart.
Referring to the anti-social behaviour in a train carriage and inside a nail bar during the boys' journey to the supermarket, the prosecution said: "Clearly their behaviour, if they were acting as a pack on the train and they were acting as a pack in the nail bar, may inform your judgement as to what they were doing at Asda."
In his summary, the presiding judge Mr Justice Fraser described Ian Kirwan as being an unfortunate member of the public in the wrong place and the wrong time.
His family are now left heartbroken after losing a man they said cared passionately for others and the planet.
They added that no one ever imagines losing someone in this terrible, senseless and needless way.
His wife of 20 years said she’s been robbed of her future with him.