A student who stabbed his former friend through the heart near a university campus after they fell out over a fake Rolex watch has been found guilty of manslaughter.
Harper Dennis, 19, plunged a knife five times into the chest of Khaleed Oladipo, 20, near De Montfort University in Leicester on the evening of February 3 this year.
A jury at Leicester Crown Court today found Dennis not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter, having an offensive weapon and failing to provide the PIN to his phone after a two-week trial.
Prosecutor Jane Osborne KC told the jury Dennis killed Mr Oladipo because of a ‘perceived debt’.
The pair had met through online gaming but fell out after Mr Oladipo gave Dennis a fake watch to settle a debt.
Mr Oladipo, in his third year studying cyber security, was walking home when he was stabbed in Oxford Street near De Montfort University’s Innovation Centre.
He was on the phone with his girlfriend Shekeizah Fowler-Palmer at the time, who heard him say: ‘Why did you come up to me and stab me?’
The attack was also caught on a passing motorist’s dashcam who told how she saw ‘a snowstorm of feathers’ from one of their puffer jackets.
Afterwards, Dennis left the scene and gave a bag of clothes to his flat mate to put out with her rubbish.
Khaleed Oladipo, 20, died after he was attacked near De Montfort University in Leicester on the evening of February 3 this year
Police were seen searching near the scene at the campus of De Montfort University
In his evidence, Dennis told the court he feared for his life and was acting in self-defence when Mr Oladipo approached him with a knife.
He said he did not know he had stabbed Mr Oladipo during their fight and he was ‘shocked’ when he was arrested on suspicion of murder at his accommodation later that evening.
Dennis, who was in his first year at Leicester University, told jurors he had sent Mr Oladipo £6,000 of savings, given to him by his parents, to make money by scamming people.
The defendant said he did not receive his money back, so Mr Oladipo gave him a Rolex watch, telling him it was real and he could sell it.
Dennis said: ‘I went to Hatton Garden to sell the watch. I went to the jewellery shop. Two jewellers looked at the watch, they examined it and realised it was fake.
‘It made me feel a bit annoyed, bit kind of disappointed in Khaleed that he let me down.’
Dennis, who told the court he had a gambling addiction, said he threatened to expose Mr Oladipo online as someone who ‘can’t be trusted’ and a ‘bad businessman’.
Dennis, of West Drayton in west London, will be sentenced later on Tuesday.
Speaking before the verdict, Detective Inspector Lorna Granville, from the East Midlands Special Operations Unit Major Crime Team, said: ‘It’s a shocking set of circumstances and quite rightly, and expectedly, creates a huge impact on the student community.
‘This is not deep entrenched criminality. What it appears is two young men with their lives ahead of them have had a falling out and one has reacted, I would say, completely disproportionately and unnecessarily to exact some retribution.’
Speaking about Mr Oladipo’s family, she said: ‘They are grieving. They are slowly realising that potentially this was over a silly dispute and they have to live with the loss of that for eternity and they are struggling to come to terms with that.’
