Stabbing of Deptford teenager Myron Yarde was 'brutal culmination of brawl started after rivals stole his bike'

Aspiring rapper Myron Yarde, 17, also known by the stage name MDOT, was killed in Camplin Street on April 3 this year after a fight that started in New Cross Road.

Fauz Richards, 19, of Camplin Street, and two 16-year-olds who cannot be named for legal reasons are on trial for the student’s murder.

Opening the trial, prosecutor Lisa Wilding QC told the court New Cross Road was a “notional and physical divide” between different groups in that part of the borough.

The court heard a group of Myron’s friends had crossed that divide and entered rival territory, an area known among the youths as Monson, where one of them had been stabbed before.

An aspiring rapper, Myron went by the name MDOT

During this trip to get a pizza from Domino’s, there was a confrontation which led to Myron’s bike, that one of his friends had borrowed, being stolen.

The fight that left Myron stabbed five times, severing his femoral artery and leaving him collapsed on the street where Fauz Richards lived, happened later that day when the young rapper and his friends returned to the area.

Ms Wilding said: “You may think it was no accident that the fight ended up on Camplin Street.

“The prosecution suggests that [one of the unnamed defendants], in effect, lured the group to Camplin Street where he knew he would find ready assistance and backup.”

Witness testimony describes two of the defendants “cornering” Myron while he was backed up against the wall, and all three were seen with knives, she told the jury.

The jury would hear conflicting evidence as to whether Myron himself was armed in the fight, she said.

One of the 16-year-old defendants told a friend “I think I’ve killed him” when he learnt of Myron’s injuries through Snapchat messages, and described how when he stabbed him it felt like he was “doing it in air” in that it went straight through his victim, hit the wall behind and bent the knife, the court heard.

Two of the defendants came out of the fight “without suffering so much as a scratch in the course of this deadly assault”.

The other suffered a minor wound on his head, roughly the size of a £2 coin, which healed within days.

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Ms Wilding added: “It is clear that the events on Camplin Street were fast, terrifying and shocking, both for participants and witnesses. Each witness noticed different things and had a different perspective.

“What is clear is that at the moment he was fatally stabbed, Myron Yarde quite literally had his back against the wall.

“He was effectively helpless, whether he had a weapon or not.”

The three defendants are all standing trial for murder on the basis of joint enterprise.

Two women are also standing trial for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Charlotte Edmunds, 32, and Jamie Kennedy, 31, who are partners and both live at Daubeney Tower, Lewisham, are accused of hiding one of the weapons used to stab Myron in a bin.

The charges are all denied.

The trial continues.