Yamine Ladghem-Chikouche, who fled to France, sentenced fro killing Duncan MacRae
Judge condemns ‘cowardly attack’ on drug addict
Published: 29 October, 2010
by DAVID ST GEORGE
A KILLER caught on CCTV at St Pancras fleeing by Eurostar to France was jailed for life for stabbing a fellow lodger to death.
The footage was played to jurors at the Old Bailey, and showed Yamine Ladghem-Chikouche, a French national, grinning and chatting as he passed through a security check.
But with a European arrest warrant out for him, he surrendered to police in northern France last March, eight months after the killing, and was brought back to London, the Old Bailey was told.
Prosecutor Mark Fenhalls said Ladghem-Chikouche plunged a bread knife eight inches into the back of drug addict Duncan MacRae, 55, at the Homeless Persons hostel they were living in Caledonian Road, Holloway. They were rowing over drugs.
He also stabbed him through the top of the head and sent the blade a second time into his back, the court heard.
Ladghem-Chickouche, 24 and unemployed, denied murdering the Scot and insisted that he came back to the UK “to clear my name”. At the end of a two-week trial the jury of five women and seven men rejected his defence that the stabbing was accidental.
Ladghem-Chickouche agreed he had armed himself – witnesses said he regularly carried a blade – and claimed he was “waving it about” on the ground floor hallway when Mr MacRae stumbled backwards and impaled himself.
Another long-term resident, Derek Cox, said Mr MacRae was “sometimes strange, but he was harmless and friendly and didn’t cause trouble to anybody.”
On July 15 last year the accused, known as “M”, was staying at a ground floor flat at the address when Mr MacRae repeatedly came in pestering a fellow tenant to buy heroin for him.
A drug dealer was on the phone and when he heard that Mr MacRae wanted drugs he refused to supply him, claiming he was a “grass”.
The lack of heroin made Mr MacRae irritable, angry, and annoyed, said Mr Fenhalls.
Ladghem-Chickouche was overheard saying he would “deal with the situation” and followed Mr MacRae into the hallway, drawing a knife from his waistband.
Raised voices were heard by other residents, followed by screaming from near the front door, and then silence. The walls and floors of the passage were spattered with blood. Police and paramedics were swiftly on the scene and Mr MacRae was found dying in a pool of blood.
At the end of a nine-hour retirement jurors convicted Ladghem-Chikouche by an 11-1 majority. Judge Martin Stephens, QC, told him he must serve a minimum 15 years for the “vicious and cowardly” attack on a vulnerable victim who, despite his addiction, had many good qualities.
Defence counsel Philip Misner said the case was a tragedy for both the family of the deceased and the loved ones of Ladghem-Chikouche, whose sister had travelled from Japan for his trial and to support him.
“Much of what took place between these men in the hallway remains shrouded in mystery,” he added. Mr MacRae, the son of a doctor, was from the Isle of Lewis.