Teenager guilty of Afro comb murder

A 16-YEAR-OLD GIRL is facing life behind bars after being convicted of killing a teenager with an Afro comb.

The girl, who was 15 at the time, spiked 16-year-old Julie Sheriff’s head with the pointed metal handle.

The girls had been rowing in the street before the defendant took the comb from her handbag and plunged it into Julie, the Old Bailey heard.

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The girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was found guilty of murder and remanded in custody for sentencing on August 28.

She burst into tears after Judge Nicholas Cooke told her he would be passing a life sentence after deciding the minimum term she must be detained.

The judge said: “I will consider your future when I am armed with the fullest information.”

Julie, from Hackney, east London, was attacked in Battersea, south London, in May last year, and lay in a coma for almost five months before dying on September 21.

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She was stabbed in the left temple in broad daylight after she and the 15-year-old rowed about malicious gossip involving boys, said Jonathan Turner QC, prosecuting.

The jury was shown a replica of the black comb, also known as a pin-tail comb, with a spiked metal handle.

A witness saw the defendant strike Julie’s collarbone without much effect and then plunge the comb into her skull.

Mr Turner said he heard a sound which he described as like “when you kill a goat back home”.

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He said the tip of the comb penetrated deep into Julie’s brain and caused bleeding and swelling.

Mr Turner told the court that the girls knew each other and “actively disliked one another”.

He added: “There seems to have been a row brewing between them as a result of malicious gossip. Two young girls arguing about gossip and about boys.”

The defendant was arrested the following day near an address in Pimlico, central London, where she was staying. She claimed self-defence. She had left a BlackBerry message saying: “I see some girl that I hate, like I actually hate her with a passion, and I kind of stabbed her.”

Julie’s family moved to Britain in 2006 from Sierra Leone, West Africa, where Julie’s father, Raouf, was a policeman, to find a better life.

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