Mother speaks out as son, 17, who stabbed Yousef Makki is named
‘My son must live with killing his friend for the rest of his life’: Mother speaks out as son, 17, who stabbed public schoolboy Yousef Makki to death is named for first time
- Joshua Molnar, who turns 18 on Tuesday, was previously only referred to as Boy A
- He’s been revealed as the teenager who stabbed Yousef Makki to death in March
- His mother Stephanie defended him but shared sympathy with Yousef’s family
The mother of the 17-year-old cleared of murdering public schoolboy Yousef Makki has admitted her son will have to live with the consequences of killing his friend, as his identity is revealed for the first time.
Joshua Molnar, who turns 18 on Tuesday and was previously only referred to as Boy A, was cleared of the murder of Yousef, also 17, despite admitting to stabbing him after an argument in Hale Barns, an upmarket village in Cheshire, on March 2.
Molnar said he was acting in self-defence and he and Boy B, also 17 and also from a wealthy Cheshire family, were both cleared of all charges following a four-week trial at Manchester Crown Court.
Now, Molnar’s mother Stephanie has spoken out after her rugby-playing son was named for the first time, describing the events in March as a tragedy and sharing her sympathy for Yousef’s family.
The teenager who stabbed Yousef Makki (left) to death can today be named as Joshua Molnar (right)
She says that her son accepts responsibility for his friend’s killing and will have to live with it for the rest of his life.
Molnar was sentenced to a 16-month detention training order – 12 months for perverting the course of justice, and four months for possession of the knife.
He was revealed today as a white Anglo-Hungarian with mild learning difficulties from a well-off family in the village of Hale.
Molnar had been at one time a pupil at Ellesmere College, a £33,000-a-year boarding school in Shropshire, where Latin is still taught and its alumni include former England rugby union captain Bill Beaumont, the current chairman of World Rugby, and Hugh Grosvenor, the seventh Duke of Westminster.
He starred in the school rugby union first XV, playing at number eight before leaving with six GCSEs.
Before his time there, he had also attended £9,000 a year Cheadle Hulme School, whose past pupils include broadcasters Katie Derham and Nick Robinson.
Again he was a regular on the team sheet for the school rugby team, but left early in his mid-teens when he declined to repeat a year.
The fee-paying public schools Molnar attended are often a conveyor belt to Oxford and Cambridge for their pupils – but he is currently serving 16 months in a Young Offenders Institute.
Despite the advantages of a good family and good education, Molnar instead became fixated with knives, living out ‘idiotic fantasies’ of being a middle-class gangster, his trial heard.
One detective described him and a second defendant as, ‘rich kids who have never had to live in the real world’.
His parents have admitted that, since the killing, they have agonised over whether they could have prevented it by encouraging their son to make different decisions in the lead up to the night in question.
Mother Stephanie said she felt compelled to speak up after seeing rumours on social media and newspapers about her son.
She insisted that he had never been expelled from school and that he had not set fire to a girl’s hair.
Molnar’s mother Stephanie has spoken out for the first time, describing the events in March as a tragedy
Yousef had won a scholarship to the prestigious £12,000-a-year Manchester Grammar School. Right, his father Ghaleb Makki outside court. Mr Makki screamed at jurors as they delivered their verdict
She also described him as ‘no different than any other 17-year-old in the area’.
Stephanie told the Sunday Times: ‘Nobody can know the detail of everything that your kids get up to. All you can do is rely on them to make positive choices based on the values that have been instilled in them throughout their upbringing.’
Yousef, who was from an Anglo-Lebanese family from Burnage, south Manchester, had won a scholarship to the prestigious £12,000-a-year Manchester Grammar School.
The court heard how hours before the stabbing, Boy B arranged a £45 cannabis deal and the teenagers planned to rob the drug dealer, a ‘soft target’.
But the robbery went wrong and Yousef and Boy B fled, leaving Molnar to take a beating.
Molnar was cleared of murder and sentenced to a 16-month detention training order – 12 months for perverting the course of justice, and four months for possession of the knife
After they met up again, Molnar then later pushed Yousef who called him a ‘p****’ and punched him in the face.
Molnar told the jury Yousef pulled out a knife and he responded by also taking out a knife and his victim was accidentally stabbed.
Speaking about the killing and the subsequent trial, Molnar’s mother Stephanie said: ‘Circumstances on the night of March 2 led to our son Joshua accidentally killing his friend Yousef with a knife whilst defending himself against a knife. He was found not guilty to the charges of murder and manslaughter, based on self-defence, in a unanimous verdict.
‘The events of that night were a tragedy. These were three friends going out on a Saturday. They should all still be here to lead fulfilling lives but they are not.
‘I cannot imagine what Yousef’s parents and family must be going through as they try to come to terms with this.
‘Joshua fully accepts responsibility for Yousef’s death in the act of self-defence and the impact of this acceptance is massive.
‘He will have to live with the responsibility of his role in this for the rest of his life.
Yousef’s furious father could be seen screaming at police officers outside the court after the verdict
Yousef’s mother Deborah Makki, a psychiatric nurse, planted a tree in his memory on the grounds of his school in Manchester earlier this year
‘We are also acutely aware that the hurt and loss that Yousef’s family is experiencing are infinitely greater than anything we are going through and nothing I can say can make up for or change that.
‘There were no winners in this case.
‘We fully support all the positive steps to celebrate Yousef’s life and anything positive in the future that can come from this tragedy is something we would welcome and contribute to in whatever way possible.’
However, her words were slammed by Yousef’s sister, who described them as ‘self-serving’.
Jade Akoum, 28, told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘I thought a normal thing to do would be to apologise and lay low. I wouldn’t want their help and I don’t want to forgive them. They haven’t once reached out to us.
‘Saying they want to celebrate Yousef’s life? Your son killed my brother.’
Yousef’s family reacted with fury after the controversial verdict in March with his father Ghaleb Makki shouting: ‘F*** you! Where’s the justice for my son! Where’s the justice?’.
Boy B had bought the knives online using a false name and had them posted from China to a friend’s address, the court heard.
Officers later found a dark coloured ‘flick knife’ behind a low boundary wall near the scene of the killing plus a silver coloured lock knife in some bushes and recovered a flick knife from down a grid.
Despite the privileged backgrounds of both defendants, they led ‘double lives’.
Calling each other ‘Bro’ and ‘Fam’ and the police ‘Feds’, the defendants and Yousef smoked cannabis, road around on bikes, ‘chilling’ and listened to rap or drill music.
They would post videos on social media, making threats and posing with ‘shanks’ or knives.
In court, Molinar broke down in tears and said: ‘I got more annoyed. I [took] it out straight away, I don’t really know what I did, kind of lifted my arm up. I didn’t realise anything had happened at first.’
Despite the money spent on his expensive education, Molnar did not ‘get on’ with his family or appreciate his parents’ largesse; he could pick his friends but not his parents he said.
During his difficult teenage years at Cheadle Hulme School, whose Latin motto In Loco Parentis means in place of a parent, his mother, Stephanie Molnar, built up a successful business.
Yorkshire-born Mrs Molnar grew up in South Africa and studied in the UK, with degrees in biology and business from Bristol, London and Warwick universities.
She worked in scientific software before becoming a marketing manager, and in 2001 co-founded the Elmscot Group – which runs children’s nurseries and out-of-school clubs in Cheshire.
She found inspiration for the business, she said, because as a working mother with young children, she struggled to find the right nursery for her own children, Lexi, a one-time Miss Cheshire contestant, and younger brother Joshua.
Molnar had been initially enrolled at £2,600 a term Hale Preparatory School, which takes children aged from four to 11.
He struggled with the ‘teaching methods’ there, according to his family, and was moved aged five to another school until the age of 11.
The nursery and after-school club business co-founded by his mother now employs more than 225 people, providing early years childcare and education for around 1,700 children.
On July 1 this year, Stephanie Molnar resigned as a director of Elmscot Group and other associated nurseries, according to documents lodged with Companies House.
Joshua’s father, Mark Lazlo Molnar – the son of a Hungarian refugee who was born and brought up in south Wales, is a management consultant and listed as an honorary general secretary of the Cheshire Lawn Tennis Association.
He is also listed as a director of Hale Village Tennis Club.
His parents arrived with their son on the first day of the trial, accompanied by their own security detail.
Both parents accompanied their son to court each day of the trial.
They divorced when their son was aged 13, the father living in a £500,000 three-bedroom townhouse in Hale village and the mother in a second five-bedroom house in the village, worth around £900,000.
The upmarket village south of Manchester, popular with minor celebrities and premier league footballers, was where Molnar was raised.
His life was a world away from the street gangsters in the Drill music he listened to, a genre glorifying violence.
How insult-laden ‘diss tracks’ and rapping about gang culture from disaffected inner-city youths related to him is unclear.
He lived in a low-crime, high wealth Cheshire village, while adopting the accent, manners and accoutrements of the urban street youth – but with more refined accessories.
Molnar sported a south central LA style neck bandana, keeping his weed and ‘shank’ or knife in an Armani man bag.
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