A young man who fatally stabbed a 24-year-old in the neck following an early-hours confrontation at a railway station has been found guilty of murder.
Seyram Kwami Djentuh pleaded not guilty in Brisbane Supreme Court late last month to murdering Lauie Tagaloa during the altercation in the inner-Brisbane suburb of Fortitude Valley on July 11, 2022.
Tagaloa died just after 4am from an 11.5-centimetre stab wound inflicted with a pair of scissors to the left side of his neck by Djentuh “in one swift move”, Crown prosecutor Elizabeth Kelso said in her opening statement.
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“Immediately blood can be seen flowing from that wound onto the floor.”
The jury returned with a guilty verdict on Tuesday after deliberating for about eight hours.
Djentuh was sentenced to life imprisonment to serve a minimum of 20 years before being eligible for parole.
Defence barrister Matthew Hynes previously said in his opening the trial was about what happened when a person runs out of choices.
“It’s about defending yourself from what is clearly an imminent threat, coming in your direction in the form of a big man, in the form of someone who has already proven that they can do serious damage to your two friends and he did that in a matter of seconds,” he said.
The men were in two groups that encountered each other for the first time after leaving different Fortitude Valley nightclubs about 3am.
CCTV and phone footage shown during the trial captured much of the movements of the men from then until after the stabbing when emergency services were called at 4.07am.
The footage showed Djentuh getting a bottle of water before going to the back of a NightOwl store and grabbing orange-handled scissors which he tucked into the back of his white jeans before the final altercation with Tagaloa’s group.
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