Student guilty of manslaughter after stabbing former friend following fake Rolex dispute

A student who stabbed his former friend through the heart after they fell out over a fake Rolex watch has been found guilty of manslaughter.

Harper Dennis, 19, plunged a knife into the chest of Khaleed Oladipo, 20, five times near De Montfort University in Leicester on the evening of 3 February earlier this year.

Dennis was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter, having an offensive weapon and failing to provide the Pin to his phone, following a two-week trial at Leicester Crown Court.

Prosecutor Jane Osborne KC told the jury Dennis killed Mr Oladipo, who he made friends with through online gaming, due to a “perceived debt”.

She said Mr Oladipo and Dennis were both in Oxford Street near De Montfort University’s Innovation Centre when the stabbing, which was captured on dashcam footage, happened.

Following the fatal attack, Dennis left the scene and gave a bag of clothes to his flatmate.

Mr Oladipo was on the phone with his girlfriend at the time of the attack, who heard him say “Why did you come up to me and stab me?”.

Dennis made two calls to Mr Oladipo’s girlfriend Shekeizah Fowler-Palmer on Christmas Day last year and said her boyfriend was a “bad guy”.

In his evidence, Dennis told the court he feared for his life and was acting in self-defence when Mr Oladipo approached him with a knife.

He said he did not know he had stabbed Mr Oladipo during their fight and he was “shocked” when he was arrested on suspicion of murder at his accommodation later that evening.

Dennis told jurors he had sent Mr Oladipo £6,000 of savings, given to him by his parents, to make money by scamming people.

The defendant said he did not receive his money back, so Mr Oladipo gave him a Rolex watch, telling him it was real and he could sell it.

Dennis said: “I went to Hatton Garden to sell the watch. I went to the jewellery shop. Two jewellers looked at the watch, they examined it and realised it was fake.

“It made me feel a bit annoyed, bit kind of disappointed in Khaleed that he let me down.”

Dennis, who told the court he had a gambling addiction, said he threatened to expose Mr Oladipo online as someone who “can’t be trusted” and a “bad businessman”.

Dennis, of North Road in West Drayton, London, is due to be sentenced later on Tuesday.

Speaking before the verdict, Detective Inspector Lorna Granville, from the East Midlands Special Operations Unit Major Crime Team, said: “It’s a shocking set of circumstances and quite rightly, and expectedly, creates a huge impact on the student community.

“This is not deep entrenched criminality. What it appears is two young men with their lives ahead of them have had a falling out and one has reacted, I would say, completely disproportionately and unnecessarily to exact some retribution”.

Speaking about Mr Oladipo’s family, she said: “They are grieving. They are slowly realising that potentially this was over a silly dispute and they have to live with the loss of that for eternity and they are struggling to come to terms with that.”