Somali refugee gets life for killing soccer starlet Kiyan Prince at the school gates

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A Somali tennager obsessed with the gang which killed Pc Sharon Beshenivsky was today given a life sentence at the Old Bailey for the murder of talented footballer Kiyan Prince outside his school gates.

Hannad Hasan stabbed Kiyan Prince to death in what a friend of the killer claimed was part of an initiation rite for a notorious street gang.

Kiyan, 15, had tried to break up a fight between Hasan and another boy.

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Kiyan Prince was a brilliant footballer

But Hasan, who went by the nickname The Killer, pulled out a penknife and plunged it into Kiyan's arm and heart, shouting: "Who's laughing? Who's laughing?"

Kiyan asked: "Why are you doing this to me?" as he collapsed on the ground crying for his mother.

The Queens Park Rangers youth team footballer died three hours later in hospital.

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Hannad Hasan stabbed Kiyan four times

Hasan, now 17, was 16 at the time of the attack in May last year. He had lived in Britain for five years, brought from his wartorn homeland by his mother who fled Somalia and Hasan's warlord father seeking a better life for her son.

At first, Hasan showed promise and seemed to move forward from his troubled background. But as he approached his mid-teens, an increasing propensity for violence emerged.

S friend of Hasan said he had become caught up with a lawless Somali-dominated gang known as Thug Fam – short for Thug Family – which is based in Edgware, North- West London, close to where Hasan lived with his mother in a ninth-floor council flat.

Members of the group were thought to be responsible for the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky.

"They don't let anyone join," said the friend, who did not want to be named. "You have to prove yourself, normally by using a knife on someone.

"That's what Hannad did, although he probably didn't mean to kill him."

Police, however, said there was no evidence of a gang link and believe Hasan attacked Kiyan in a "show of bravado".

The pair knew each other from school, the London Academy in Edgware.

Sporty and popular, Kiyan was tipped by some for a brilliant football career.

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Kiyan had been tipped for greatness at Queen's Park Rangers

Hasan prided himself on his ability at basketball, but was jealous of Kiyan's talents.

He became increasingly violent in the months before the murder, assaulting a female pupil and bursting her eardrum.

He started carrying around a Swiss Army knife and threatened to stab another schoolgirl in a row over a bus seat.

Less than a week before the fatal stabbing, he was suspended for ten days for threatening a female teacher.

At the time of the murder, he was undergoing anger management training.

Hasan denied murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter, telling police he didn't realise a penknife would cause such a serious injury.

He told officers: "It was like a toy I carried around every day."

He was found guilty by an 11-1 majority at the Old Bailey.

 

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