Teenagers guilty of killing man in ambush

Two teenagers have been found guilty of killing a 26-year-old man after luring him to a street and attacking him with a machete.

Adam Khan was attacked in Humberstone Road, Luton, at about 18:00 BST on 31 August 2025, barrister Kate Bex KC said.

At Harrow Crown Court, a boy aged 17, who was 16 at the time of the killing, was found guilty of murder.

A girl aged 17, also 16 at the time, was found guilty of manslaughter for her part in his death.

Due to legal restrictions relating to children under the age of 18, the pair, both from Luton, cannot be named.

Both teenagers will be sentenced at a later date.

Jurors had been shown CCTV footage of Khan, who also lived in Luton, arming himself with a tyre wrench and fighting with the boy.

Bex said the girl knew both the boy and Khan, and told jurors: "The prosecution case is that she lured Mr Khan to the scene where [the boy] attacked him with a machete, which he was carrying in his trousers."

She told the trial, being overseen by judge Mr Justice Bennathan, that Khan was the victim of an "ambush".

Jurors heard Khan and the girl had exchanged phone messages, then met near Humberstone Road.

Under oath, the boy admitted that he and the girl had planned to "trick" Khan by claiming he had offered her cannabis in exchange for sex.

Bex told the trial that Khan had been stabbed five times: twice in the face, twice in the stomach and once in the arm.

He had died in hospital that evening.

One witness had told police that Khan was not trying to "attack" the boy with the wrench, but had "clearly" been trying to "protect himself".

Bex said no "messages of a sexual nature" had been recovered from the girl's devices or Khan's.

She told jurors the boy had a number of convictions for youth crime dating back to 2023, when he was 14.

They included assaults on children and a police officer, and knife crime.

In March 2025 he had admitted attempted robbery, possessing an offensive weapon – a machete – and unlawful wounding.

On 23 April 2025 he was sentenced by Milton Keynes magistrates to a youth rehabilitation order with intensive supervision and surveillance, ending on 22 October 2025.

He was also made subject of a five-month curfew and handed a three-month exclusion with electronic monitoring from entering Aylesbury.

Det Insp Adam Bridges, of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit, said: "The teenager who stabbed Adam arrived at the scene armed with a knife, demonstrating a clear willingness to use extreme violence if the situation escalated."

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