Stab-case youth accuses boy

The teenager alleged to have murdered headmaster Philip Lawrence accused another boy of the stabbing yesterday.

He said the boy borrowed his coat and cap to disguise himself during a confrontation outside St George's Roman Catholic Comprehensive School, north-west London. As people were running and screaming, the teenager said, he saw the other boy "punch Mr Lawrence sideways. He was still wearing my coat - the hood was up. He had a scarf across his face. He started walking towards me. I was waiting for him - he got pretty close to me. I saw a knife in his hand. He said he had stabbed a teacher in the heart. He did not seem at all panicked. I saw the blade - it did not appear to have blood on it."

The teenager, who was not a St George's pupil, was testifying in his defence. He has denied murdering Lawrence last December.

He denied carrying a weapon and said he went to the school at the request of the other boy - a Filipino - because "some black boys were picking on them. It had happened a few times. They were getting picked on because they were Filipino".

The other boy, who had a tattooed hand, asked for his clothing, saying there were teachers around and he needed a disguise. He saw the tattooed boy run off after the stabbing. "I saw him throw the knife in the middle of the road. He still had my coat on." He said that when he caught up with others in his group, he told them a teacher had been stabbed "because of what the other boy told me".

Asked by his counsel, David Spens, QC, why he later told an acquaintance he had done the stabbing, the teenager said: "I was boasting." He told him he saw blood "to make it sound more exciting". It had not been true, he told the court.