Teen jailed for ferocious stabbing

A 16-year-old boy who ferociously stabbed an alleged bully 10 times has been locked up indefinitely.

The teenager was said to have flipped at a nightclub after being approached by Karl Burris, aged 21.

Wolverhampton Crown Court heard how the 16-year-old pulled out the blade and knifed Mr Burris, leaving him with a collapsed lung and a two inch cut to his liver.

The victim's brother Kevin Burris died in a car crash on his way to visit his sibling in Birmingham's City Hospital.

Sending the 16-year-old to custody yesterday, Judge John Warner said: "It's pure chance, given the ferocity and number of blows, that death didn't result."

Wolverhampton Crown Court heard yesterday how the two men had been at an event called Vibe, held at the Identity Recording Studio on Summit Crescent, Smethwick.

Trouble flared on the night of March 25 when Burris had told the defendant, who admitted wounding with intent, "not to come round Smethwick, in his area" or something would happen to his family, the court heard.

CCTV showed the attacker, who cannot be named for legal reasons, stabbing Mr Burris about the body before fleeing.

He later told probation officials he had been "humiliated by him, pinned against a wall and forced to do star jumps" on earlier occasions.

Judge John Warner said: "The footage I've seen illustrates the ferocity of the attack. It's a familiar story of a young man, carrying and at some stage using, a knife."

Judge Warner said: "You are a dangerous young man and when you flip, you flip."

He gave the youngster an indeterminate sentence and said he must at least serve two-and-a-half years.

He must only be released once he is no longer considered a danger to the public.

Judge Warner rejected the Express & Star's application to name the 16-year-old after hearing his family had had to move after masked men had come to his mother's house hunting for her son.

Kevin Burris, who was 29 from Smethwick, died after the car he was in hit a lamp post in Dudley Road, Ladywood.