A second inquest has been ordered into the death of 17-year-old Yousef Makki, who died after being stabbed in the heart in Cheshire in March 2019.
High Court judges in Manchester quashed the original inquest findings, in which a coroner ruled out both unlawful killing and accidental death as reasons for Yousef’s death.
The teenager’s friend Joshua Molnar, aged 17 at the time, was cleared of murder and manslaughter, saying he acted in self-defence.
His co-defendant, Adam Chowdhary, who described Yousef as his “best friend,” was acquitted of perverting the course of justice. He was given a four-month detention order after admitting possession of a flick knife.
In 2021, a coroner ruled she could not reach a verdict of unlawful killing as the precise circumstances of the death “could not be ascertained.”
Molnar was jailed for 16 months for possession of a knife in a public place and perverting the course of justice by lying to police at the scene.
Yousef’s family brought a judicial review in 2022 following the first inquest in 2021, challenging the coroner’s finding that there was an insufficiency of evidence on the “central issue,” of whether the killing was unlawful.
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Yousef was described by his family as a “bright” and “dedicated student” and had won a scholarship to study at Manchester Grammar School.
His mother Debbie, 55, died in May 2020, during lockdown. She had never recovered from Yousef’s death and died of a broken heart, according to her family.
Representing Yousef’s family, Peter Weatherby KC told the hearing that the original coroner should have “strived to make a finding” that Yousef’s death was accidental or unlawful.
He said: “In essence, the coroner found insufficient evidence on the balance of probabilities that he was unlawfully killed… we say that there was a wealth of evidence.”
