JAILED FOR SELF-DEFENCE

A BULLIED Brisbane schoolboy who murdered his teenaged tormentor has been jailed for seven-and-a-half years.

The 17-year-old boy, who was 16 at the time and cannot be named, pleaded guilty to murdering Aiden Liyange, 18, on March 24 last year at a northside Brisbane suburb. The year 11 student stabbed Aiden through the back of the neck with such force the steak knife entered his mouth. The Supreme Court in Brisbane was told the boy became miserable, frustrated and angry after being bullied by Aiden and his friends, who saw him as weak and vulnerable.

Aiden and his mates, who were all older and unemployed, would turn up at the boy's house looking for money for marijuana, would rummage through his room, subject him to constant teasing, and would bash him every few days, the court was told. Justice Cate Holmes said the boy lived with his mother, who had a serious mental illness which subjected him to extraordinary stress and left him with no adult support. She said just prior to the killing Aiden had gone to the boy's home, demanded money, punched him and demanded his discman.

When the boy got the discman he also collected two steak knives from the kitchen and set off with Aiden, stabbing him when they got to a football field. The boy told police he wanted to end the harassment, the court was told. As Aiden lay dying, the boy said: "I've got another one right here for you (referring to a knife)."

Justice Holmes said that at the time of the killing, she considered the boy was still in despair and anger at the most recent invasion of his home and the beating he sustained. She found the killing was not pre-meditated, pre-organised or cold blooded. Under juvenile justice legislation, the boy will have to serve at least 70 per cent of his seven-and-a-half-year sentence. He will spend much of that time in an adult prison.