Victoria Station stabbing: 12 in court
TWELVE teenage boys appeared in court yesterday charged with stabbing a schoolboy to death in front of rush-hour commuters.
The teenagers – four aged 16 and eight aged 17 – are accused of murdering Sofyen Belamouadden at London’s Victoria Station.
Sofyen, 15, was left in a pool of blood after he was chased into the station by a gang in school uniform at about 5.20pm on Thursday.
He was taken to hospital but died shortly afterwards.
The defendants, all from south London, made a brief appearance at West London Youth Court. Earlier yesterday, murder squad detectives detained a girl and three teenage boys, bringing the total number of arrests over the stabbing to 24. They were being questioned at a south London police station.
Two 15-year-olds, four 16-year-olds and a 17-year-old have been released on bail and a man in his 30s has been told he will face no further action.
Sofyen, a pupil at Henry Compton School in Fulham, west London, was a promising footballer and had attracted the attention of Chelsea scouts.
The youngster, from Acton, west London, is the subject of a special RIP Sofyen page on the social networking site Facebook.