Two boys sentenced after death of Grammar School pupil

A teenager who lied to police after he knifed his friend in the heart will spend eight months in custody.

The boy, aged 17, stabbed Yousef Makki, also 17, in the heart with a flick knife on a tree-lined street in the upmarket village of Hale Barns, Cheshire, on March 2.

Yousef, who was from a single-parent Anglo-Lebanese family from Burnage, south Manchester, had won a scholarship to the prestigious £12,000-a-year Manchester Grammar School.

The defendant, Boy A, admitted perverting the course of justice by lying to police and possession of a flick knife.

He was cleared by a jury earlier this month of murder and an alternative count of manslaughter after he said he acted in self defence.

On Thursday at Manchester Crown Court, Mr Justice Bryan sentenced Boy A to a 12-month detention and training order for perverting the course of justice and a four-month detention and training order for possessing a bladed article, to run consecutively.

A second 17-year-old defendant, Boy B, was cleared of perverting the course of justice by allegedly lying to police about what he had seen but also admitted possession of a flick knife.

Both were also cleared of conspiracy to commit robbery in the lead-up to Yousef's death.

Boy B was sentenced to a four-month detention and training order.

Both will be released halfway through their sentences under supervision.

Neither of the defendants from wealthy Cheshire families can be named as they are aged under 18.

Adam McClean was at Manchester Crown Court and has the latest: