A teenager tried to murder a 16-year-old boy in an attack at a barber’s shop in front of staff and customers after stealing knives from a nearby store to arm himself for the assault.
Ryan Owens inflicted three stab wounds on his victim in two seconds during the attempted murder at premises in the High Street, in Musselburgh, in East Lothian.
Owens, now aged 18, was with three accomplices when they burst into the hairdresser’s and attacked the boy on April 16, 2021.
Owens, formerly of Tranent, in East Lothian, admitted attempting to murder the boy, who is now 18, in the knife attack at TG Barbers after punching and kicking him and repeatedly striking him with a knife, when he appeared at the High Court in Edinburgh.
The victim told the court that on the day of the attack he and his then-girlfriend had decided to go out to get him a haircut and go for some food.
He said: “Walking towards the hairdresser’s I saw a boy there, just outside, who gave me a weird look. He was being weird with me, like he had a problem with me when I didn’t even know the laddie.”
He said the youth was asking him for a fight and tried to get into an argument with him and said he would get his mates.
The victim said the youth left but came back with others. “Basically I could see them all looking at me through the window. I didn’t feel comfortable with a group of boys standing around the window waiting on me to leave,” he said.
He said he told his girlfriend to call for an Uber to come and pick them up but the gang ran into the barber’s shop and attacked him. He said his girlfriend tried to get one of the attackers off of him but ended up getting hit as well.
He said after the assault stopped and they left and he saw one of them look at him through the shop window.
He told the court: “He looked shocked. I looked down and I was covered in blood. That’s why he must have been shocked.”
“I was in shock. I didn’t know what was happening. I had never been stabbed or had a serious bleed,” he told the court.
He was taken by ambulance to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and told that he required surgery. He said: “I had blood in my left lung. They had to drain my left lung.”
Owens admitted that he stole the knife from a nearby B&M store before using it in the attack.
He said: “It was a very long time ago so I only remember some parts of it.”
He said his memory was affected by the passage of time and added that he smoked “a lot of weed”.
Brandon Sivier, 19, of East Hermitage, Edinburgh, and a 17-year-old youth, who cannot be identified because of his age, denied attempting to murder the 16-year-old and were acquitted of that offence, but found guilty of assaulting him by punching and kicking him.
A fourth teenager, aged 16, who also cannot be identified, earlier admitted punching and kicking the victim in the assault.
The trial judge, Lord Scott, deferred sentence for the preparation of background reports.
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