A 15-year-old has been found guilty of murdering software engineer Ian Kirwan, who was stabbed in the chest after a row at an Asda in Redditch.
Mr Kirwan, 53, was stabbed in the heart by the youth, then aged 14, after challenging him for messing around in the supermarket’s toilets on 8 March last year.
The teenager, from Birmingham, had travelled with a group of male friends by train to the Worcestershire town and subjected Mr Kirwan to a minute-long attack near the entrance of the Asda store.
The youth was said to have acted as part of a masked gang which “terrorised” members of the public in Redditch.
Three other teenagers – two aged 14 and one aged 16 – were cleared of murder and manslaughter but jurors found them guilty of violent disorder.
A fifth, aged 16, was acquitted of murder, manslaughter and violent disorder, having claimed he was not involved in the fatal confrontation and could not have predicted it.
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A ten-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court was told Mr Kirwan, an artificial intelligence engineer who worked at Jaguar Land Rover’s Coventry headquarters, was an “unfortunate member of the public in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
All those convicted will be sentenced at the same court on 15 February.
