Boy who stabbed friend more than 70 times was thrown out of primary school for knife threat

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice

A teenage boy who stabbed his friend more than 70 times and tried to behead him had been reportedly expelled from school at the age of 10 after threatening a girl with a knife.

Marcel Grzeszcz, 15, was convicted of murdering Roberts Buncis on 12 December last year, two days before the victim’s 13th birthday.

It has since emerged that he was expelled after he had taken a knife into St Nicholas Primary School in Boston, Lincolnshire, and threatened a girl with it.

A mother who used to take Roberts to school with her children told The Sun: “It’s not his first incident with a knife. When he was at primary school, he took one into class to threaten other kids. He threatened a girl with it and was excluded.”

The court heard that Grzeszcz, who was 14 at the time of the attack, lured Roberts to meeting him in a residential street near where they both lived by offering him £50 to sell cannabis.

He then stabbed him “in excess of 70 times”, the court heard. A pathologist said that wounds to the neck and arm indicated that he was trying to decapitate Roberts, as well as cut off his hands. Roberts was also stabbed in the chest and abdomen.

Grzeszcz, who had been expelled from secondary school and sent to a pupil referral unit for dealing drugs, has claimed that he “lost control” after Roberts allegedly pulled the knife on him.

The victim, who came to live in the UK with his father from Latvia when he was seven, was found the day after the attack. Grzeszcz was charged with murder the following day.

On Monday at Lincoln Crown Court, Grzeszcz was jailed for a minimum of 16 years and his identity – which had not been publicised due to his age – was revealed after the judge lifted reporting restrictions.

Mr Justice Jeremy Baker warned the boy that he may never be released as he had shown no remorse.

He added that the crime was further aggravated by Grzeszcz’s attempts to destroy the clothes he wore on the day of the murder and hide the blade with a collection of other knives he owned in his bedroom.

Grzeszcz often carried a knife at secondary school, a pupil told the court.

Prosecuting lawyer Mary Loram QC said Grzeszcz intended to rob a shop at knife-point to get cash to set himself up as a cannabis dealer, and was believed to have feared that Roberts would “snitch” on him.

He messaged another boy saying “Rob’s a liability”, to which he received a message saying “if he snitch, smack time”.

In court after Grzeszcz was sentenced, Roberts’ father Edgars Buncis’s statement was read out.

He said: “How do I put into words how I feel? This is all wrong. No father should ever have to bury his son.

“I have lost my destination, my purpose. My life is in the cemetery. I feel empty, nothing will change this.”

Detective Chief Inspector Richard Myszczyszyn, of the East Midlands Special Operations Unit, said: “This is an utterly tragic case.”

He also said: “The act was utterly senseless and the consequences, devastating. It will be remembered by officers and staff as one of the worst and saddest cases we have ever dealt with.

“The level of violence, and that it involved children, makes it almost incomprehensible.”