Teenager jailed over unprovoked knife attack
A teenager who launched an unprovoked and near-fatal knife attack in a park "for the sheer pleasure of it" was jailed for 13 years today.
Aaron Wembo, 17, told Adnan Ali, 18, "I'm going to kill you" as he stabbed him six times in June last year.
He also knifed another 18-year-old, Mehtab Kamal, twice in the buttocks during the attack in Stratford Park, east London.
When challenged afterwards by an onlooker, Wembo said: "Do not mention my name to the police."
He boasted: "You are nobody, you cannot do anything, even the police cannot do anything. I can do this anywhere in Stratford. I have friends and if I told them, they can kill you."
Wembo, of Manor Park, east London, was found guilty of attempting to murder Mr Ali and wounding his friend with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, as well as violent disorder, by an Old Bailey jury.
Judge Peter Thornton told him: "This was knife crime at its worst. The victims had done nothing to you. But you stabbed them both in the back, intending to wound one and kill the other.
"This looks very much like gratuitous violence, for the sheer pleasure of it."
Knife crime was a "plague upon the streets of London" and would be "punished severely", the judge said.
The court heard that the two victims had been relaxing in the park when a friend of Wembo's who had been cycling round on a BMX looking for trouble accused Mr Kamal of looking at him, signalling around 20 others to launch the attack.
Wembo kicked and punched both victims to the ground, then got a knife he kept in nearby bushes, stabbing Mr Kamal and then Mr Ali as they lay on the ground.
The latter collapsed with life-threatening injuries, struggling to breathe as he tried to escape from the park. Mr Ali suffered a punctured lung.
He was, said the judge "fortunate to be alive".
"Both victims will never forget their terrible experience," he told Wembo.
"You, on the other hand, have expressed not a moment's regret or remorse for what you did."
The judge lifted reporting restrictions which had prevented Wembo from being identified because of his age.
