CHINDAMO: ‘I KILLLED THE TEACHER…IT WAS A TERRIBLE THING’
Central News, Press Room, Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, LONDON, EC4
Tel: 020 7236 0116
Pix: 020 7329 2877
Blackfriars Crown Court/Jo Parkes
email:news@centralnews.co.uk
https://www.courtnewsuk.co.uk
18 August 2011
terrible…1
The murderer of Philip Lawrence has spoken publicly of killing the head teacher for the first time as he told a jury:’I know what I’ve done was a terrible thing.’
Learco Chindamo, 30, is accused of using his notoriety over the 1995 murder as a weapon to mug a man at a cashpoint – just four months after he was released from jail.
David Sexton, 20, was ordered to hand over money after ‘disrespecting’ Chindamo as he withdrew cash outside a supermarket, prosecutors claim.
Flanked by Gregory Jananto, 32, and Saeed Akhtar, 32, the murderer allegedly stood inches from Mr Sexton’s face and asked him: ‘Do you know who I am?’ and ‘Do you remember about the head teacher in Maida Vale?’
Blackfriars Crown Court has heard how Chindamo, who spent more than 14 years behind bars after denying the murder at his 1996 trial, claims Mr Sexton started the row by calling him: ‘Killer’, after recognising him in the street.
He admits taking money from the alleged victim but claims Mr Sexton offered him £10 during the incident at around 3.30am on November 13, last year.
Chindamo described how he was born in Italy but came to the UK aged six or seven, after he and his Filipino mother fled his abusive Italian father.
Dressed smart-casually in a light grey jumper, grey shirt, dark jeans, the 30-year-old said he at first spoke little English and ‘my behaviour wasn’t very good’ at a school.
By the time he was 15, his age when he stabbed the 48-year-old head teacher, he had ‘become involved in a gang and I was doing a lot of bad things.’
He added that it was ‘my choice’ to run with the gang.
On December 8, 1995, he went with others to St George’s Roman Catholic School, in Maida Vale, to sort out ‘trouble’ with a pupil, Chindamo told the jury.
‘Threats were made and we went there to sort it out, basically,’ he said.
Chindamo, who was not a pupil at that school, described how a fight started outside and father-of-four Mr Lawrence came out and broke it up.
Describing the stabbing, he said: ‘He followed me and my group. I struck him with my hand.
‘As he tapped my shoulder I struck him and I’ve kicked him as well.
‘I think I said: ‘F*** off, leave me alone,’ somthing along those lines.
‘He tapped me on the shoulder a second time.
‘I stabbed him.’
Chindamo, who had been clutching the side of the dock, took a sip of water from a plastic cup before continuing.
‘I’ve turned around as he’s tapped me on the shoulder and I’ve stabbed him in the chest,’he said.
‘He’s gone to dodge it and it’s gone into his arm.’
The blow to the chest punctured Mr Lawrence’s heart and he collapsed and died nearby.
Tyrone Smith, defending, said: ‘You knew that you were responsible for killing this man.
‘When you were interviewed on that day, did you admit the offence?’
‘No’, replied Chindamo.
He admitted lying at the trial which ended on September 23 1996, claiming he was ‘not responsible for the act of killing.’
The teenager was found guilty and a judge jailed him for life, with a recommendation he serve a minimum of 12 years before being considered for parole, jurors heard.
Chindamo appeared to fight back tears as the barrister rehearsed the sentencing and his voice broke as he said: ‘Yes.’
‘You knew that Mr Lawrence had a widow and a young family, yet you didn’t do the decent thing and plead guilty to what you’d done,’ Mr Smith said.
‘Yes’, he replied.
The barrister asked why and he said: ‘I was afraid of going to prison for a very long time.’
Tearful again he said: ‘I was afraid that my mother and my family would disown me.
‘I was scared. I was 15 years old.
‘I know that’s not an excuse.’
He conceded his denial was ‘entirely selfish’.
Eventually when he lost his appeal and all hope that ‘I could get off’, he said he began to admit to the murder to those close to him.
‘I admitted it to my mother,’ he said. ‘Afterwards she said she would stick by me and that took a lot of weight off my shoulders.’
Mr Smith said subsequent prison reports on his behaviour ‘show that you exhibited a high degree of remorse and accepted full responsibility’.
Chindamo wrote a letter of apology to Mr Lawrence’s widow Frances and family during an exercise asked to send it.
But the authorities deemed it ‘inappropriate’ to do so.
Mr Smith said: ‘Do you recognise the damage and loss your actions have caused to them?’
‘Yes,’ replied the defendant.
Asked about the torrent of negative press about him, he added: ‘I know what I’ve done was a terrible thing. A horrible thing.’
Jurors have watched CCTV footage of the alleged mugging of Mr Sexton, outside a Sainsbury’s Local branch on Chalk Farm Road branch, Camden, north London.
During around seven minutes of dialogue, the trio are said to have surrounded, threatened and hurled abuse at the victim, while Jananto brandished a glass bottle.
Mr Sexton had been on a work night out in Covent Garden before moving on to Camden and had consumed around 12 pints of the cider and lager mix ‘snakebite’.
Footage shows Chindamo, Jananto and Akhtar were already on a corner by the Chalk Farm Road cashpoint when Mr Sexton and his group arrived.
Mr Sexton left after handing over cash but police arrived after an off-duty tube engineer rang 999 and officers traced the victim from his bank records, the court heard.
Chindamo was also heard to tell Mr Sexton that Jananto had a history of violence as well, jurors have heard.
He allegedly said: ‘This is my guy from day he stabbed up my witness from last time.’
Chindamo, of Canadian Avenue, Catford, se London, Akhtar, of Lavita House, Chalton Street, Kings Cross, northwest London, and Jananto, of Percy Road, Shepherd’s Bush, west London, deny robbery.
The trial continues.
ends
Central News, Press Room, Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, LONDON, EC4
Tel: 020 7236 0116
Pix: 020 7329 2877
Blackfriars Crown Court/Jo Parkes
email:news@centralnews.co.uk
https://www.courtnewsuk.co.uk
18 August 2011
addterrible…1
Chindamo later described his response to media coverage and his attempts to keep a low profile.
Jurors heard he was named atfer his conviction when the trial judge lifted reporting restrictions protecting his identity as a minor.
Describing the publicity, along with his custody photograph, he said: ‘There’s been a lot, I don’t know how many.’
During his time in custody he was transferred several times, firstly between young offenders’ institutions, and then to adult jail.
Over the years he gradually found himself in lower security prisons and earning himself privileges for good behaviour and insight into his crimes, the court heard.
In April 2005 while at category C HMP Wolds in Yorkshire, he was allowed out for escorted absences to re-introduce him to the outside world.
Chindamo said: ‘Some people get institutionalised and react badly, so it’s to get used to being outside.’
He went to Ford Open Prison in West Sussex, and in June of that year his record was described as ‘excellent’.
Aged 25 he was granted temporary licence and allowed to work in the community but he was spotted outside shortly afterwards.
Tyrone Smith, defending, said: ‘Do you accept that the media has a perfectly good right to report the case and to produce your image?’
‘Yeah,’ replied Chindamo.
Jurors were referred to an article in The Sun with a photo and the caption: ‘Not a care in the world. The swaggering killer.’
The barrister said: ‘Did you think that anything you had done on that day justified this type of headlines.’
‘No,’ replied Chindamo.
‘I was happy. I went out with my family. Of course I’m going to be happy.
‘It was the first time I’ve been with my family outside in about nine or ten years.
‘I wasn’t swaggering without a care in the world.’
As a result the prison service decided it was ‘perhaps inappropriate’ for further temporary releases, jurors were told.
Mr Smith asked him how accrual of temporary licence days affect a prisoner’s chances of release.
Chindamo said: ‘It makes it a lot more likely.
‘It shows the Parole Board that you can go out without anything occurring.
‘It demonstrates you can go outside by yourself.’
The following May, as a result of a policy change, all foreign nationals in open prison were ‘removed’ and Chindamo, who held an Italian passport, was sent to HMP Blakenhurst in Worcestershire.
He was soon afterwards served with a notice of intent to deport him, said Mr Smith.
Asked by the barrister what his links with Italy were at that stage, Chindamo said: ‘None whatsoever,’ and added that he spoke no Italian.
‘My father’s Italian but I wasn’t raised with my father, I was raised with my mother.
‘He was in prison.
‘I don’t know any of his family.’
An Asylum and Immigration Tribunal decided not to deport him but as a result in 2007 some politicians including then leader of the opposition David Cameron, called for the scrapping of the Human Rights Act – a demand which was widely reported in the news.
Asked how it made him feel to be the centre of a national row, Chindamo said: ‘I can understand why people would want me deported.
‘I killed someone, I wasn’t born here. Who cares – I’ve killed someone.
‘But my family live here. I don’t know anyone in Italy.’
One report pictured him next to the Yorkshire Ripper, which he said ‘p**sed me off’, but ‘I kind of expect it… It’s a story’.
A Government appeal to the High Court over his deportation was refused, and in March 2008, having spent 12 years in jail, he was moved to Hollesley Bay Open Prison in Suffolk.
He got day release in October and was again pictured in the Sun and described as ‘swaggering’, with a story suggesting he was about to be released.
Chindamo said: ‘I’ve never been aware of any photographs that have been taken apart from one when I was on my mobile phone.
‘They have long lens cameras and they hide.’
A Parole Board review in February 2009 decided it was not time to release him, because he had not built up adequate temporary licence.
Chindamo told the jury he was given work in the community.
He said: ‘First I worked in a stud farm with horses, cleaning horses, mucking.
‘I worked there a couple of months.
‘They had me working in the town centre in a tyre place changing tyres.’
Chindamo said while out and about he used an alias – ‘Leo’, with a difference surname.
‘I didn’t want people to know who I was.
‘I didn’t want people to tip off the press, ring the press and say: ‘That bloke’s working there.’
In July last year he was finally released, and started living in a probation hostel, with other ex-offenders.
Chindamo was also pictured with a girlfriend, who had a young son, and the relationship ended because of the publicity, he said.
Family of the child’s father had contacted social services to prevent a ‘killer playing with our little son’, said Mr Smith.
‘That was one of the first relationships you’d ever had.
‘Did you understand why the paternal side of that boy’s family may be reluctant to have you anywhere near that young child?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Chindamo.
The trial continues.
ends
