Clapham pizza man killed in 'row over inner tube' (From Your Local Guardian)

Clapham pizza man killed in 'row over inner tube'

5:38pm Wednesday 15th October 2008 in

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A pizza delivery man who stabbed a colleague to death in a row over a scooter inner tube was jailed for five years at the Old Bailey on Wednesday.

Fernando Palomeque - a 28-year-old, Brazilian-born illegal immigrant - knifed Mojtaba Hidari through the heart in the back yard of the Pizza GoGo takeaway restaurant in Wandsworth Road, Clapham, on September 23 last year.

A fellow worker discovered Mr Hidari - a 26-year-old, Iranian-born asylum seeker - slumped against a wall at the eatery, with Palomeque “kicking his head like a football”.

Palomeque denied murder, but was convicted of manslaughter.

The court heard the pair came to blows after a row about an inner tube on a delivery scooter, which needed replacing.

“The defendant told him the boss had given him permission [to get a new inner tube]” said prosecutor Brian Altman. “Mr Hidari responded that today he was the boss and the defendant should have spoken to him about it.

“Unhappily this exchange, trivial though it may appear, seems to have been the catalyst for what was then to happen.”

The pair were pulled apart and Mr Hidari, of Worsop Drive, Clapham, ordered Palomeque to leave the shop, but five minutes he returned and a fight broke out.

Mr Hidari - armed with a broken mop handle - “provoked” Palomeque, who attacked him with a knife.

After the attack Palomeque said: “I have knifed him, I have knifed Mojtaba. I am going to take the shop's motorbike,” before fleeing.

An air ambulance doctor attempted open heart surgery on Mr Hidari, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The court heard Palomeque contacted his brother Fabiano, 33, who helped hide him and give him cash to travel by ferry to Dublin - where he was arrested a month later and extradited.

Fabiano Palomeque, 33, of no fixed address, admitted perverting the course of justice and will be sentenced later.

Sentencing, Judge Gerald Gordon said: “Whilst you were entitled to defend yourself reasonably, what you did by taking one of the knives and using it inflict the fatal wound, went far too far - hence the jury's verdict.”

Mr Hidari's brother, Ali, said he had concealed the death from their Iranian parents for two months “because they might have had a heart attack”.

He said: “Everything has turned from white to black for our family . . . everyone in the family loved him and we still do not understand why he had to be murdered.”

Palomeque, who was refused entry into the country in 2005, will be deported automatically after he has served his sentence.