A 15-year-old boy has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 13 years for the murder of 12-year-old Ava White in Liverpool. The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was convicted after a trial at Liverpool Crown Court.
Ava died in November 2021 after being stabbed in the neck during an argument that followed a Christmas lights switch-on event in the city centre. The court heard that the boy, who was 14 at the time, and three friends had been recording Snapchat videos of Ava and her group, leading to a confrontation. Her friends said the boy "grinned" after using a flick-knife before fleeing the scene. Ava was taken to Alder Hey Children's Hospital but died shortly afterwards.
The boy later disposed of the knife and his coat, which was found in a wheelie bin, and was arrested just two hours after the stabbing. Initially denying he had been in the city centre, he later blamed another boy before claiming he had acted in self-defence, saying he wanted only to "frighten her away". The prosecution rejected his account, and the jury found him guilty of murder.
In a victim impact statement, Ava's mother, Leanne White, described her grief, saying: "My beloved Ava dies all over again every morning I wake up. The moment Ava died is now yesterday, tomorrow and forever." Her father, Robert Martin, said: "Ava was the reason I got out of bed, my reason for living."
The court heard the boy, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and attended a special school, had previous encounters with the law, including a community resolution for hitting a PCSO and an arrest for assault on two women. His defence said he carried the knife because he had previously been a victim of crime. Sentencing him, Mrs Justice Yip said he had shown a lack of remorse and that Ava was dead "because you chose to carry a knife and you chose to get it out and use it".
