Teenager jailed for stabbing 16-year-old to death

A 17-year-old who was convicted of killing a promising young footballer was yesterday jailed for nine years.

The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, stabbed 16-year-old Luke Wallace in the groin during a confrontation in Ballieston, on 17 June last year.

Luke suffered massive blood loss from the stab wound, which cut his femoral artery, and died in hospital eight days later.

Sentencing the 17-year-old judge Lord Woolman told him: “You stabbed Luke with a lock-back knife and he died several days later.

“You claimed he had brought the knife, dropped it and you picked it up, but the jury convicted you of having a knife in a public place.

“However, you were attacked first and only inflicted one stab wound.”

The High Court in Glasgow was told the teenager was a first offender with a troubled background and had been bullied at school.

Defence QC Gordon Jackson said: “There was quite severe provocation. He was walking up the street with a girl and he was quite badly attacked. There was fairly severe violence shown towards him.

“This is someone who has been severely provoked and strikes one blow which results in terrible consequences.”

A jury at the High Court in Glasgow last month convicted the teenager of the culpable homicide of Luke. He claimed he had been acting in self defence.

Luke’s mother Angela Wallace, 49, told the High Court in Glasgow that, just an hour before the stabbing, she texted her son asking where he was and telling him “be safe”.

She told the jury: “ I know 100 per cent Luke would never carry a knife.”

The court heard that Luke and a friend Josh McFall, 18, confronted the 17-year-old as he walked along the street hand-in-hand with a teenage girl. Mr McFall had a piece of wood in his hand and Luke had a lump of concrete, which he threw at the 17-year-old. The accused reacted by chasing after Luke, from Garrowhill, and stabbing him once with a knife at Glasgow Road near to Maxwell Avenue.