"I feel bad:" Sheffield schoolboy accused of murder tells jurors Harvey Willgoose's stabbing was 'accident'
A teenage boy has told jurors he ‘feels bad’ and ‘regrets’ causing the death of 15-year-old Harvey Willgoose, before claiming the stabbing was an ‘accident’.
Harvey was stabbed in the heart in the courtyard of All Saints School a few minutes into the lunch break on February 3, 2025. He collapsed less than a minute later, and died a short time after that.
When asked about the seconds leading up to him producing the knife and inflicting the fatal wounds, he told jurors he believed Harvey was about to stab him.
“Why did you pull out a knife?” asked Gul Nawaz Hussain KC, lead defence counsel.
The defendant replied: “I was out of control in myself.”
When asked what he meant by that, the defendant clarified: “I can’t control my emotions or what I was doing.”
Mr Hussain continued: “Can you remember stabbing Harvey?” to which the defendant replied: “No.”
The defendant continued by saying he could not remember the events that immediately followed, which include Harvey first moving towards him, before backing away again, as the defendant once again moves towards him.
Harvey collapsed a matter of seconds later.
The defendant told jurors that he first realised that he had stabbed Harvey was when the school’s headteacher, Sean Pender, put his arm around him.
Asked Mr Hussain: “When you first realised you’d stabbed Harvey, how did you feel?”
“Upset and scared and shocked,” the defendant replied.
Mr Hussain continued: “When did you first realise Harvey had been badly hurt?”
The defendant replied:”When the police came and arrested me.”
Under cross-examination from prosecutor, Richard Thyne KC, the defendant denied he ‘stabbed Harvey on purpose’.
“Are you saying it was an accident?” asked Mr Thyne, to which the defendant replied: “Yeah.”
Mr Thyne continued: “Are you actually saying you didn’t mean to stab him?”
“Yeah,” responded the defendant.
Under earlier questions from Mr Hussain, the defendant said Harvey came over to him in the courtyard, ‘looking angry and like he was going to do something’.
The defendant said one of Harvey’s hands was visible, while the other one was ‘a bit’ in his trousers, near to the ‘waistline,’ causing him to believe Harvey ‘had a knife on him’.
He told jurors that Harvey then said: ‘What’s your problem?” and referred to an earlier encounter between the pair.
The defendant said he responded by telling Harvey ‘my bad, just shake my hand’ - as a form of apology - even though he did not believe the earlier incident was his fault.
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Mr Hussain asked the defendant why he would apologise in those circumstances, to which he replied: “Because if I said sorry to him and he shook my hand I didn’t think anything would happen.”
The defendant said his ‘my bad’ utterance was delivered in a quiet voice, and Harvey followed it up by telling him “No, f**k off.”
“How did he say it?” asked Mr Hussain.
The defendant replied: “Raised his voice…trying to get me scared, said it angry…he looked mad.”
He claimed Harvey went on to push him, and ‘angrily’ said: “I’ll do you in proper this time.”
“What did you believe he meant?” asked Mr Hussain.
“I’m going to stab, stab you,” the defendant said, adding he believed he was going to be ‘very badly’ hurt.
Throughout much of his evidence, Mr Hussain has asked the defendant - who has admitted having issues controlling his anger - to rank how calm, and scared, he felt at any given time on a scale of one to 10.
When asked how scared he was, how calm he felt, and how badly he believed he was going to be hurt, in those seconds before he stabbed Harvey, the defendant replied “10.”
Mr Hussain asked him if stabbing Harvey was something he wanted to do, if it was something he wanted to happen, to which the defendant replied: “No.”
“How do you feel now, knowing that Harvey died because of what you did?” continued Mr Hussain:
He replied: “I feel bad and regret.”
“Can you understand how this has affected his family?”
“Yeah,” said the defendant, before adding: “I feel sorry.”
He also said he felt ‘bad’ about how Harvey’s death had affected people at school.
“When you took the knife to school with you that day, was it because you wanted to stab someone…was it because you wanted to stab Harvey?” asked Mr Hussain.
“No,” replied the defendant, in response to both questions.
Jurors have previously heard how a lockdown incident took place at All Saints, involving pupils Boy A and Boy B, five days before Harvey’s death.
The scuffle between the two boys triggered a ‘lockdown’ after the defendant claimed he saw Boy A with a knife. No such weapon was ever found.
Harvey is said to have taken the side of Boy A, while the defendant took the side of Boy B.
The defendant has previously told jurors that following a weekend of social media threats - in which Harvey is alleged to have told him to come to his address, and threatened to involve males with violent reputations - he was scared to go to school.
He claims to have armed himself with a knife because he feared he would be ‘jumped’ or ‘stabbed’ during the course of that school day.
The defendant’s cross-examination is set to continue this afternoon.
The defendant admits Harvey’s manslaughter, and to possessing a bladed article on school premises.
He denies murder.
The trial, which is expected to continue through to the second week of August, continues.