Gatwick Airport: Murderer tried flying to Jamaica after stabbing

Rommel McKoy, 16, was stabbed by Juhvaine Elliott, who then tried escaping to Jamaica .

A family handout photo of Rommel McKoy (Image: Metropolitan Police)

CCTV footage shows the moment Elliott, 17 at the time, ran towards Rommel in Hicken Road, Brixton, brandishing a knife before going out of view of the camera.

The "unprovoked" attack on April 4, 2022, left Rommel stumbling towards St Matthews Road, where he was assisted by members of the public before the air ambulance arrived to take him to King's College Hospital, where he died 16 days later.

The junction of Hicken Road and St Matthews Road (Image: Google)

Detectives piecing together clues identified Elliott via CCTV which showed him wearing a lightweight blue and white jacket. Witnesses also said he was the person who stabbed Rommel.

They carried out a search warrant at his home on April 21, 2022, but he was not there. Instead, they discovered he was boarding a flight at Gatwick Airport to Montego Bay in Jamaica that evening.

Gatwick Airport (Image: Gatwick Airport)

The flight was stopped and Elliott was arrested. In the following days, he provided a series of "no comment" interviews before being charged with Rommel's murder on May 10.

Rommel’s mother Karen told The Standard that she had taken him to an interview at Merton College for a science and engineering course earlier on the day he was stabbed.

Read more: Murderer tries to flee country through Gatwick after stabbing man 24 times

She said: "He had his whole life ahead of him. We got home and he said ‘I’m just going go to check my friends’ and that’s the last I saw of him.

"He was so kind and thoughtful and intelligent. His friends loved him. He was calm but so ambitious. He wanted to do so well in his career that he could buy me a house by the time he was 25."

Rommel, who studied at City Heights Academy in Tulse Hill, left behind his 11-year-old sister and older brother who lived just five minutes away from where the attack happened.

Brixton Water Lane, where Elliott Lived (Image: Google)

A jury found 18-year-old Juhvaine Elliott, of Brixton Water Lane, guilty of murder after a trial at Southwark Crown Court. He will be sentenced on Friday, December 8.

Metropolitan Police detective inspector Jason Fitzpatrick said: "Another young life has been lost on the streets of London as a result of knife crime.

"Juhvaine Elliott had been friends with Rommel but that did not stop him from launching an unprovoked, fatal attack on him.

"Rommel's death has left his friends and family devastated. Juhvaine Elliott will now spend a long period of his young life in custody."