Overview
- The 17-year-old, who cannot be named due to his age, admitted the murder of 22-year-old John McNab and an earlier knife assault at Portobello Beach during a High Court hearing on Wednesday.
- The judge deferred sentencing to next month in Dundee and will consider a BBC request to lift reporting restrictions on identifying the youth at that hearing.
- Prosecutors released images of the hunting knife used in the killing, a large blade engraved “kombat tactical” that carried McNab’s blood on the blade and the attacker’s DNA on the handle.
- Prosecutors said the youth lay in wait after a dispute linked to a planned cannabis purchase, then chased and stabbed McNab; a post-mortem found a 10cm-deep abdominal wound that ruptured major blood vessels and caused fatal bleeding.
- McNab’s mother, Lisa Petrie, issued a statement of grief and is campaigning through Not In Vain to curb knife sales in stores and to install more bleed kits, as Police Scotland pledged new youth violence prevention work in the coming months.