By Rebecca Peppiatt and Louise Rennie
A 16-year-old boy who fatally stabbed a good Samaritan for trying to retrieve a stolen bike from him in Bull Creek last year has been found guilty of murder.
The jury in the trial of the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, took seven hours to deliberate on whether he intended to kill Petr Levkovskiy, 42, or whether he should be found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
The boy was just 15 at the time of the offence in May 2022.
During his nine-day trial in the Supreme Court of Western Australia, the jury heard how Levkovskiy tried to intervene to retrieve a $500 mountain bike which the teen had just stolen from a 10-year-old boy before being stabbed in the abdomen and later dying of his injuries.
The jury reached its guilty verdict on Tuesday afternoon after retiring on Monday to determine if the boy intended to kill his victim.
The teenager did not react to hearing the decision and remained calm when appearing via video link after testing positive to COVID-19.
He will now undergo psychological and detention management reports ahead of his sentencing on March 24.
Levkovskiy was at home on a Sunday morning and about to eat breakfast with his wife and daughter when they heard screaming coming from the street.
Levkovskiy’s wife Anna Levskovskaya testified during the trial that her husband of 21 years said to her, “Let’s go and have a look”.
At her husband’s suggestion, the couple jumped into their car and followed a boy on a bike.
Levskovskaya recalled pulling up next to the boy a few minutes later and asking him, “Is this your bike?”
The boy did not answer, she said, but her husband got out of the car and walked towards him and said, “Let’s talk”.
“He was calm,” she said.
“It was not abrasive. He said it in a calm manner.”
Witnesses saw the teen pull a 7-inch filleting knife from a sheath and make two stabbing motions towards Levkovskiy, one of which caused the fatal injury.
His defence lawyer, Simon Freitag, asked the jury to consider a conviction of manslaughter instead of murder, arguing the teenager struck out at Levkovskiy during a struggle and had intended to stab him in the leg.
While the boy admitted to stabbing the 42-year-old, he denied he intended to kill him.
Levskovskaya told the court in broken English how fast the incident happened
“Everything happened in just a few seconds,” she said.
“When I tell the story it’s like slow motion. It’s very hard. I try my best in my memories.”