Teenager gets 15 years after murdering lover in garlic bread row

A TEENAGER who killed a young mother in a frenzied knife attack during a “ludicrous” row about garlic bread has been ordered to serve at least 15 years’ detention under a life sentence.

Jamie Ellis, 18, had enjoyed a “normal day” of heavy drug-taking, before he lost control, angry with his girlfriend, Alami Gotip, 22, because she had ridiculed his attempts to cook a meal, and allegedly complained because there was no garlic bread.

He inflicted 38 knife wounds to her neck and body, while her children, aged four and one, slept upstairs in the family home in Livingston, West Lothian.

“You subjected her to a brutal and frenzied attack… your actions have not only taken the life of the person you say you loved, but have deprived two young children of their mother,” the judge, Lord Glennie, told Ellis at the High Court in Edinburgh.

He said Ellis might have been jealous that Ms Gotip had remained on friendly terms with her former partner, and he might have felt “got at” by her criticism of him.

“None of this is any excuse for what you did. The truth is you had taken a large amount of Valium and been smoking cannabis. It was for you ‘a normal day.’

“You completely lost control when she criticised you,” added Lord Glennie.

Ellis, from Knightsridge, Livingston, West Lothian, admitted murdering Ms Gotip on 25 May in her home in the Dedridge area of the town.

The court heard Ms Gotip and Ellis had been in a relationship for some months, after she had split from Neil Henderson, the father of her two daughters, Shola and Jasmin.

She and Mr Henderson worked together in an Inland Revenue office and they remained on good terms.

On the evening of the murder, a sobbing Ellis arrived at a relative’s home and said: “I’ve stabbed her… about 40 times. I lost it.”

A short time later, he told a friend: “She’s finally cracked me... she pushed me to it.”

He went with his father to the police, after telling him that he and Ms Gotip had been having an argument over garlic bread.

Ellis stated at the police station: “I’ll take it on the chin. It shouldn’t have happened. I just snapped. I just got sick of it. It’s not that I am a horrible person but s*** happens.”

Asked why he had stabbed Ms Gotip, he said she had been moaning at him because he had not made garlic bread for tea. He said he had got everything nice and she had called him a “useless piece of s***” and said he could not do anything right.

“He felt their relationship was coming to an end, could not bear for her to be with someone else so thought, ‘f*** it’, and attacked her,” said the advocate-depute, Susanne Tanner

“He said that when Ms Gotip had a drink, she always turned nasty on him.”

The defence counsel, Brian McConnachie, QC, said a background report on Ellis made tragic reading, highlighting an exposure to violence from a very early age, either witnessing his father assault his mother, or being the victim of his father’s violence.

Ellis had smoked cannabis from the age of eight, and had gone on to abuse other drugs.

“He describes the day of the murder as being ‘normal’, taking a large amount of Valium and smoking cannabis,” said Mr McConnachie.

“The catalyst for the offence seems, frankly, ludicrous – an argument over the cooking of dinner.

“He cannot explain or understand why his reaction to the argument and feelings of being put down by her was to attack her in the way he did. He remains shocked that he could behave in that manner.”

Ms Gotip was described in court as a “bubbly and outgoing” person. She had helped raise two of her siblings and also looked after her mother