An “outwardly normal” 15-year-old boy with a “worrying interest in knives” who stabbed another teenager through the heart on the way home from school has been named for the first time as Bardia Shojaeifard.
Alfie Lewis, 15, was stabbed to death “in full view” of pupils leaving a primary school in the Horsforth area of Leeds last November.
Shojaeifard, who was 14 at the time, was found guilty of murdering Alfie by a Leeds Crown Court jury in April.
He had admitted stabbing Alfie with a 13cm-long kitchen knife he had brought from home but denied murder, claiming he was scared for his life when he pulled out the weapon.
Shojaeifard can be named publicly for the first time after the judge, Mr Justice Cotter, lifted reporting restrictions preventing him from being identified on Friday.
He said lifting the defendant’s anonymity would help in the “vitally important debate about the scourge of knife crime, among young people in particular”.
Mr Justice Cotter said the public would be wondering how a young boy “from a loving and supportive family” could commit such an “extraordinary” crime “without forewarning or any warning signs save for some pictures of knives on his phone”.
Shojaeifard will be sentenced later on Friday.