Model murderer’s twisted obsession

A Louis Vuitton model who stabbed a rival to death after becoming obsessively jealous of his success is facing a life sentence.

George Koh, 24, copied Harry Uzoka’s ‘look,’ his Instagram feed and even boasted he slept with his girlfriend, fellow catwalk starlet Ruby Campbell.

Koh, who ‘wanted to be as famous as Mr Uzoka’, had been branded a ‘fake’ and was warned by Mr Uzoka to stop aping him in heated social media exchanges.

The victim was described in court as ‘the country’s most famous black model’ who had won contracts with Mercedes and Levi’s.

He arranged a confrontation to settle the row with Koh ‘face to face’ in Shepherd’s Bush on 11 January this year.

Mr Uzoka, 25, recruited his flatmate, Adrian Harper, as back-up and the pair made their way around the corner to Ollgar Close armed with a dumbbell bar each.

But Koh was waiting with a knife in each hand accompanied by ‘big, burly, strong’ pals Merse Dikanda, wielding a ‘terrifying’ machete, and personal trainer Jonathan Okigbo, both also 24.

‘It is not difficult to work out which side won and which side lost,’ said prosecutor Richard Horwell QC.

Mr Harper managed to escape but Harry was quickly cornered around a parked red VW Polo and knifed in the heart by Koh before he managed to run back to his flat.

He collapsed outside his home and died on the pavement despite the best efforts of the emergency services.

Mr Horwell told jurors in his closing speech Koh ‘plainly had an obsession with Harry Uzoka’.

‘He even suggested to one witness that they were at a similar level in the modelling world – and that was not true,’ the prosecutor said.

‘Whatever was going on in Koh’s mind, and you may think you haven’t been told anything like the truth, whatever was going on in his mind was festering into an unhealthy and toxic mix, and that is what the events of 11 January suggest.’

An Old Bailey jury today (mon) found Koh guilty of murder following a four-week trial.

Dikanda was also convicted of murder whilst Okigbo was found guilty of manslaughter.

All three appeared in the dock and remained emotionless as the verdicts were read out by the foreman.

Judge Wendy Joseph QC said: ‘I do not want to drag this out unnecessarily.

‘Manslaughter can take some time so, I will set aside the morning on 21 September for sentencing.

‘I also want impact statements from Harry’s family who have sat through this trial everyday with such dignity through some horrendous evidence.

‘We will meet again when I will sentence you for the matters the jury has convicted you for.

‘In the meantime you will go back to prison.’

Mr Horwell earlier told the court: ‘Harry Uzoka was a well-known and successful model with a very bright future ahead of him and his celebrity status is relevant because it is that very part of his life that brought him into contact with the first defendant, George Koh.’

The court heard the pair first crossed paths at an Agi & Sam fashion show in 2015 where Harry gave a group of younger models, including Koh, tips on things like how to walk properly.

After meeting again at an Urban Outfitters shoot shortly after, Mr Uzoka agreed to look through Koh’s portfolio and recommended he should ‘go to a better agency’.

They followed each other on Instagram after parting company and occasionally bumped into each other in London or Paris.

Harry was signed to Premier Model Management at the time of his death and had appeared in campaigns for Everlane and GQ whilst Koh had been on the books at IMG Models.

Koh described one incident during an Adidas booking when the photographer snapped a selfie of them together and sent it to Mr Uzoka, who replied: ‘Good luck for the shoot, but why is your Instagram copying my Instagram?’

Mr Horwell said Harry gradually became ‘annoyed’ that his ‘less successful’ lookalike was trying to mimic him and make contact with some of his friends through the social media site.

The row intensified when Paris-based model Annecetta Lafon arrived in London on 28 December last year.

Speaking from behind screens, Ms Lafon told jurors Koh ‘harassed’ her for sex after inviting her to stay at his place before quizzing her about other models she had met in London.

‘He said he used to be friends with Harry and he f**ked his ex-girlfriend,’ she said.

On 8 January, Ms Lafon went to stay with Harry, who she described as ‘a good friend’.

She said Mr Uzoka was ‘laughing’ when she relayed Koh’s claims before he told her ‘it was not the first time this happened’.

‘Then he showed me messages George had sent him apologising, saying he was a big fan of him, that he admired him, that he would never say bad stuff about him and that it was Harry who pushed him to do this kind of job,’ Ms Lafon added.

One of Harry’s flatmates, Seun Lawal, had an Instagram spat with Koh, warning him to ‘stop doing what you’re doing’ otherwise ‘it’s going to get mad for you’.

During a text exchange between Mr Lawal and their landlord, the latter remarked on how Koh ‘wants to be Harry so bad’.

Mr Lawal replied: ‘Everything about him is copying.’

On January 11, Koh sent Mr Uzoka an Instagram message reading: ‘Where you? I’ll come there. We can fight. Bring your friends with you.’

Within 10 minutes Uzoka had responded, telling him to ‘come Shepherd’s Bush’.

Koh insisted he only recruited Dikanda and Okigbo because he was scared of being attacked by Harry and his friends and he had no intention of actually fighting.

He told jurors he used the word ‘out of bravado’ and did not even expect his rival to show up.

He claimed to have been walking the streets of London with two knives in his bag for days ‘just in case any of his mates saw me’ and moved them to his pockets as they neared Harry’s address.

When the groups faced off he told jurors he pleaded: ‘This is ridiculous – we could be brothers. This is over a girl.’

Koh continued: ‘He was like ‘I know you did it. You don’t need to bad-mouth people’.

‘He either thought I slept with his girlfriend, or I said it, and I was just trying to ensure him nothing was going on.

He told jurors he took the machete out to ‘scare’ Harry and Mr Harper away.

Koh sobbed in the witness box for more than a minute telling jurors: ‘All I was doing was defending myself. In the course of it I killed Harry and I’m sorry for that.’

But Mr Horwell rubbished Koh’s claims of self-defence and accused him of ‘pretending’ to wipe tears from his eyes.

Mr Horwell said: ‘Harry was well-liked, well respected, and you became a little obsessed with him, didn’t you?

‘You wanted to become Harry Uzoka. You wanted to be as famous as him.’

Koh, of York Way, Camden, northwest London, denied murder but was convicted unanimously by the jury.

He had earlier admitted possessing two knives on the day of the attack.

Dikanda, of no fixed address, denied murder, possessing a machete on the day of the attack and possessing a bladed article in a separate incident two weeks later but was found guilty on all three counts.

Okigbo, of Trevithic House, York Rise, Camden, was cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter.

All three were remanded in custody ahead of sentence on 21 September.

ends.