Deonte Mowatt-Slater

A MAN has begun a 14-year jail sentence after being found guilty of killing a teenager with a knife.

Francie McCarthy, 22, had been cleared of murder but found guilty of the manslaughter of 16-year-old Deonte Mowatt-Slater.

The victim crashed a moped into a lamppost near the Elthorne estate in Archway after being stabbed.

Jurors at the Old Bailey were told that the two did not know each other when they crossed paths in Courtauld Road.

A brief altercation between them – out of sight of CCTV cameras – left Deonte with fatal stab wounds to the neck and chest before he crashed his bike.

When Mr McCarthy took the stand during the trial, he told the court he had stabbed Deonte accidentally and in self defence when the teenager allegedly “drove at” him on his motorbike.

He said: “I thought he was going to run me over and then try and stab me or shoot me. I thought I was going to die.”

Deonte was not armed and prosecutors said that the killer’s claims that he had not realised he had stabbed the teenager could not be believed.

Deonte’s mother told the court that he had been a “model student” at school but had got “sucked into” a different lifestyle.

Judge Sarah Munro KC said it was “yet another example of the fatal consequences which stem from the carrying of knives”.

She said long sentences did not seem to be detering young people from arming themselves.