Two men have been found guilty of stabbing a talented athlete to death while he was on his way to an Arsenal match.
Tashan Daniel, 20, had been waiting for a train at Hillingdon Station, in west London, when Alex Lanning, 22, and Jonathan Camille, 19, changed platforms to provoke him and his friend Treyone Campbell.
Lanning then stabbed Mr Daniel in the chest in what prosecutor Jonathan Rees described as a ‘senseless killing’, the Old Bailey heard. He was already on licence for a previous stabbing in Brighton at the time, but denied he had meant to seriously harm Mr Daniel, claiming it was an ‘accident’.
Today the jury found Lanning, from Hillingdon, guilty of murder, while Camille, 19, was cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter. Both men were remanded into custody to be sentenced on August 20.
The court heard how Mr Daniel, who trained at Hillingdon Athletic Club, had been ‘excited’ to watch Arsenal play for the last time and had kissed his dad Chandy, 59, goodbye at 3.30pm on September 24 last year.
Within an hour, his father witnessed paramedics battling to save his son’s life on the platform, before being told there was nothing more they could do.
Mr Rees told jurors that Mr Daniel did not know his attackers, who had been on the opposite platform going the other way. He said Lanning had been ‘looking for trouble from almost the moment he walked onto the westbound platform’.
The catalyst appeared to be that Lanning thought Mr Daniels was ‘looking at him across the rail tracks’, the court heard. Mr Rees suggested it was Lanning who had been ‘gesturing in a fashion that suggests a challenge’ to Mr Daniel and his friend.
The defendants then changed platforms to confront the pair and ‘violence erupted’, in which Mr Daniel was stabbed by Lanning, jurors were told.
Lanning had a previous conviction for wounding a man with a knife in Brighton dating back to July 2016, as well as for having 250 wraps of heroin, the court heard.
He had been released half way through a four-year sentence in 2018 and was on licence for those offences at the time he killed Mr Daniel.
After his arreest, Camille claimed he and Lanning had crossed platforms after the latter told him the two boys had been abusive to him. He went on to claim that he started to speak to the pair but was ‘pushed’ by Mr Campbell, causing him to act in self-defence.
Mr Rees argued against Camille’s claims, stating that both defendants were ‘in it together to inflict damage on the opposition’.
Mr Daniel’s family reacted with tearful joy as the guilty verdicts were delivered. Speaking outside court, Chandy said his son was a ‘fantastic human being’ with ‘so much potential and so much to give’.
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He continued: ‘That life, that prospect, that future, was cruelly and needlessly taken away on the afternoon of September 24 2019. On that day a man, who let’s not forget, already held a conviction for stabbing someone else, was free to walk around with a murderous weapon in his possession.
‘That same convicted criminal was able to choose to cross a bridge and a platform for absolutely no reason to confront our innocent son. It is in no doubt, nor has it ever been, that this was a senseless, needless, horrific and ultimately unnecessary act of violence. One that our family shall be paying for for the rest of our lives.’
Describing the last moments of his son’s life, he said: ‘As parents, we had to watch in disbelief as the paramedics worked on our son’s lifeless body on that platform at Hillingdon – a platform which we will never feel able to use again.
‘I held him, stroked his face, and kissed him, as he lay on that platform, only to be told by the paramedics that there was nothing more that they could do for him.
‘My wife – his mother – collapsed at the news, unable to comprehend what was happening to our darling boy.’
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