A man has been jailed for a minimum of 25 years for murdering an aspiring Olympic athlete on a London Underground platform in a 'chance encounter' fight. Alex Lanning, 22, stabbed Tashan Daniel in the heart as the 20-year-old went to watch Arsenal play last September.
The attack occurred at Hillingdon station after Lanning asked Mr Daniel 'what he was looking at' across the tracks. Lanning used a £200 German-made knife designed for NATO military aircraft rescues, which he claimed came from the set of the Fast and Furious film. The violence lasted just 34 seconds.
Passing sentence, Judge Mark Dennis QC described it as a 'dreadful display of violence'. The court heard Lanning was still on licence for a previous stabbing in Brighton in 2016 when he killed Mr Daniel. After the murder, Lanning and his accomplice Jonathan Camille fled, discarded their clothes and the knife, and changed into pyjamas before being arrested 10 days later.
Jonathan Camille, 20, was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in a young offenders' institute for manslaughter. Mr Daniel's 15-year-old sister Oceanna said in a statement that her brother was a 'kind person with a good soul' and that the crime was 'committed by heartless individuals'.
