A 16-year-old man has been sentenced by a jury in Lincoln, England, to at least 15 years in prison for the brutal murder of a 12-year-old last year.
On December 12, 2020, 15-year-old actor Marcel Grez persuaded his friend Robert Bansis, who would turn 13 two days later, to follow him to a forest in Fistoft, near Boston.
There, he managed to stab him more than 70 times all over his body, according to expert testimonies, to behead him. The blows were so severe that the tip of the knife blade broke and got stuck in the victim's skull.
The perpetrator claimed that the victim was the one who attacked him and that he reacted in a state of self-defense by losing control.
The jurors, however, found him guilty of premeditated murder. According to the court, Grez, a Latvian, was a drug dealer in the high school where he attended and the victim and the motive of the murder was that the perpetrator thought that 12-year-old Robert had "nailed" him.
The judge allowed the name of the perpetrator to be made public even though he is a minor, considering that it is in the public interest.
