Three teenage boys “plotted and planned” a stabbing attack over an unpaid £20 cannabis debt which killed a 16-year-old boy, a court has heard.
A 16-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is on trial at Hove Crown Court charged with the murder of Joshua Ingram, who was fatally stabbed at Seaford railway station, on September 10, 2025.
He has pleaded guilty to an alternative charge of manslaughter.
He is also accused, along with two youths aged 17 and 15, of conspiracy to cause GBH with intent.
The 15-year-old is also on trial charged with assisting an offender, which the 17-year-old has pleaded guilty to.
Rossano Scamardella KC, prosecuting, told the jury that the 16-year-old defendant was a “small-time drug dealer” who had supplied Joshua with drugs in the summer of 2025 but had not been paid for them.
He said that the three defendants had then “plotted and planned the attack” including discussing where their victim “lived, how and where to attack him and what to use to do so”.
Mr Scamardella said: “All of this over a £20 cannabis debt.”
The prosecutor said that in June 2025, the 16-year-old defendant sent a message on Snapchat saying “This f****** Josh guy owes me a £20 sheet the f****t”, to which the 17-year-old replied “Let’s ride out” which Mr Scamardella said was a “street slang term for confronting someone with violence”.
He said that by August 2025, the 16-year-old and the 15-year-old sent messages with “phrases such as poke, wet and dip when discussing the planned attack on Joshua, all three words accepted for street slang for stabbing”.
Mr Scamardella said that the 16-year-old went to Seaford on the day of the attack with a 19cm-long knife hidden in his tracksuit bottoms when he approached Joshua, who was from Newhaven, and a friend at the railway station.
He said that the 16-year-old defendant, with his hoody pulled up, tapped the friend on the shoulder and asked “Is that Josh?” before pulling out the knife, prompting the friend to shout out to warn Joshua that he was about to be attacked.
The prosecutor said that the 16-year-old then stabbed Joshua twice, and added: “Such was the sharpness of the blade, and the force used, the knife tracked through his coat and clothing and entered his body on the lower front right side of his chest.
“It passed upwards through his diaphragm and into and through the right ventricle of his heart. The blade travelled 15cm into his body.”
He added: “Joshua stood no chance. The speed of the attack from behind gave him no chance to defend himself and the injury he sustained was so serious that he could not survive.
“He collapsed on the station platform and despite the very best attempts by members of the public and emergency workers, he died within an hour of being stabbed and even before he could be taken to hospital.”
Mr Scamardella said that the 16-year-old defendant fled from the scene and put the knife in a bag with some clothing and took it to the 17-year-old’s home who put it in his bedroom.
Later that day, the 17-year-old and the 15-year-old took the bag with the intention of disposing it over the cliffs – but were stopped by police, the prosecutor said.
Mr Scamardella added: “Joshua Ingram was murdered in cold blood by (the 16-year-old) and the cowardly attack on him had been planned for weeks.
“(The two co-defendants) helped their friend before the event with the scheming and with the planning, and were there to assist him immediately after when they both knew he had stabbed Joshua Ingram.”
In a tribute released by the family of Joshua after his death, they described him as a “cheeky chappy who was loved by many” and who was taken “far too soon”.
The defendants, who cannot be named because of their age, deny the charges and the trial continues.
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