Grieving mum of private schoolboy Yousef Makki blast ‘shameless’ parents of teen who knifed him in the heart for their ‘PR offensive’
THE grieving mum of a private schoolboy who was stabbed in the heart has blasted his teen killer’s wealthy parents as “shameless” for signing up with a PR firm. Joshua Molnar knifed his pal Yousef Makki after a drug-related argument on March 2, with Yousef’s family branding him “scum of the earth”. The former Cheadle […]
THE grieving mum of a private schoolboy who was stabbed in the heart has blasted his teen killer’s wealthy parents as “shameless” for signing up with a PR firm.
Joshua Molnar knifed his pal Yousef Makki after a drug-related argument on March 2, with Yousef’s family branding him “scum of the earth”.
The former Cheadle Hulme School pupil was cleared of the murder and manslaughter of Yousef in July on the basis of self-defence.
Molnar was locked up in a young offenders institution after admitting possessing the knife which caused Yousef’s fatal wound, and perverting the course of justice by lying to police that someone else had inflicted the injury.
His parents, Mark Molnar and Stephanie Molnar, gave an interview with The Sunday Times in which they described their killer son as “a normal, typical teenage lad” and a “fabulously creative chef”.
But Yousef’s mum Debbie Makki, 54, hit back at her son’s killer’s parents for having “no remorse” after hiring Manchester PR agency MC2 Communications.
‘THEY ARE SHAMELESS’
Mrs Makki told The Daily Mail: “Who do the Molnars think they are having a publicist? They’re hardly Posh and Becks. They are shameless.
“They have shown no remorse to us during or since the trial. We’ve never heard anything from them. Surely, as human beings they should sympathise with us losing such a huge part of our lives.
“Instead, they seem to be more worried about tainting their reputations.”
Mrs Makki and her daughter Jade Akoum, 28, are “exploring all avenues to ensure justice for Yousef”.
Mrs Akoum said: ‘They can have all the money in the world and use a PR company but they can’t change the fact their son killed Yousef and was troubled.”
Molnar’s identity is no longer a secret as a Sunday newspaper won the agreement to waive Molnar’s anonymity order before his 18th birthday on Tuesday.
Molnar’s mum Stephanie told the Manchester Evening News in a statement: “I cannot imagine what Yousef’s parents and family must be going through as they try to come to terms with this.
“Joshua fully accepts responsibility for Yousef’s death in the act of self-defence and the impact of this acceptance is massive.
“He will have to live with the responsibility of his role in this for the rest of his life.
“We are also acutely aware that the hurt and loss that Yousef’s family is experiencing are infinitely greater than anything we are going through and nothing I can say can make up for or change that.”
If I had a pretty cool knife I would show it off a bit
Joshua Molnar
Yousef, from Burnage, was the academically gifted boy who won a bursary to one of the country’s best independent schools.
Molnar was his friend from the leafy outer suburbs, who wanted for nothing materially.
His dad Mark, 56, a maths graduate, is a company director and business consultant, while his mother, Stephanie, 51, co-founded of a chain of Cheshire nurseries.
The pair divorced when he was 13, but gave him a privileged life of of independent schools, designer gifts, expensive holidays and nights out, raising him in Cheshire.
But Molnar was eager to create a bad boy image among other private school kids on the local streets.
Molnar would tell friends that at times he had run away from home and talked of sleeping in his mother’s car.
A source close to the family said neither of his parents was aware he had ever run away from home, and that they “don’t recall” him ever sleeping in his mother’s Alfa Romeo.
At the age of 15 he began using cannabis, sporting a bandana to keep his weed and ‘shank’, also known as knife, in an Armani bag.
He began living what his own lawyer described as the double, fantasy life of a juvenile, “middle class gangster”, “playing around with knives” and getting into fights.
One detective described him and a second defendant as “rich kids who have never had to live in the real world”.
We are also acutely aware that the hurt and loss that Yousef’s family is experiencing are infinitely greater than anything we are going through
Joshua Molnar's mum Stephanie
The elite schools Molnar went to often enable students to soar straight to Oxford and Cambridge, but he was not an academic high achiever like his friend Yousef.
Instead he saw himself as the class clown.
It was on the rugby field, in school teams and with Altrincham Kersal RFC, where he expressed himself, and found vent for his aggressive streak.
He started carrying a knife for protection against muggings and because peer pressure made him feel “I should be doing that”.
He told his trial: “If I had a pretty cool knife I would show it off a bit.”
At the £12,000-a-year Cheadle Hulme School, some considered him a flash bully and recall him barging into pupils he didn’t like in the corridors and posting pictures online of his latest designer purchase.
Selfie videos shown during the trial filmed him acting out violent scenarios, which his own lawyer would call “idiotic fantasies”, fuelled by a love of drill music tracks which glorified the use of knives.
He filmed himself with a machete in the mirror of his bedroom, sniggering as he made violent stabbing motions towards another boy, the point of the blade coming just a few centimetres from his face.
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In February this year, Molnar shot another video where he appeared to make slashing movements across the throat of someone in the distance, with a machete, before poking the blade into a mattress.
Then, on March 2, he stabbed somebody for real; his friend Yousef , through the heart, on Gorse Bank Road in leafy Hale Barns, an act the jury accepted, by their verdicts, was self-defence.
Yousef, 17, was a pupil at Manchester Grammar School. Unlike Molnar, his parents would never have been able to afford independent school without financial help.
The knife that killed Yousef was delivered with enough force that the hilt went into his chest, inflicting a 12cm deep wound which went right through his heart.
Earlier that night, Molnar, Yousef and a third boy had been socialising, smoking some cannabis, and there were knives which the third boy bought online.
Molnar ended up getting “jumped” during an alleged drug deal to buy cannabis that went wrong.
Molnar’s trial heard he blamed the third boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, for arranging the ill-fated drug deal, and he claimed Yousef had taunted him, calling him a “pussy”.
Molnar told jurors after he saw Yousef take his knife out, he felt “quite on edge” so he took his knife out in a bid to warn him off.
Asked if he knew how the knife ended up inside Yousef, he said: “Not really. I do not know what I did. I don’t know how it all came together.”
In the aftermath, Molnar described how he made an attempt to help Yousef, taking off his top and using it to try and stem the bleeding.
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Today Molnar remains locked up, subject to a 16-month detention and training order.
It is expected he will be released in March.
The other boy is serving a four-month sentence for possessing a knife.
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