Birmingham man murders own brother after row over incident in Lidl

A man has been jailed for murdering his brother in a row over an incident at Lidl. 

Lenville Waite, 59, stabbed his older sibling Clifton Waite, 61, at their home in Small Heath last year.

He then went on the run, staying first at a homeless shelter in Birmingham city centre before travelling to Coventry where he bought new clothes from Primark before his arrest.

On Tuesday, Waite was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 17 years after a trial at Derby Crown Court.

The trial heard that the family had argued that day over a news article with a picture of Lenville that implicated him in some sort of incident at a Lidl shop where a security guard was attacked.

Sentencing, a Judge said: "The Lidl incident got brought up again...Your brother said you couldn't do to him what you did to the Somalian, in reference to the security guard knocked to the floor at the shop. Your temper clearly just went at that moment in time.

"When he wasn't going to desist as he had done previously and started wrestling you, that's when you decided, albeit momentarily, you weren't going to use it [the knife] to threaten him, you were going to use it to stab him and you did stab him.

"And it went in the wrong place as far as he is concerned. It could have gone anywhere. It didn't. He died very, very quickly."

The judge concluded the offence was 'aggravated' by the use of a knife but he accepted Waite had not premediated the killing and had an intention to cause 'really serious harm' but not an 'intention to kill'. The judge also accepted there were small elements of provocation and self defence.

Waite had told police he was 'glad it's all over' when he was arrested and was said to give a 'consistent' account of the background to the attack over the course of nine interviews. Judge Smith added: "To be fair I don't think anybody really disagrees with that picture painted.

"What was in disagreement was how you used the knife. The jury decided and are sure you used it deliberately to stab him."