Thirty-nine-year-old Nigerian man, Marvyn Iheanacho, has been declared guilty of beating his five-year-old stepson to death.
He was reported as having kicked and punched his five-year-old stepson as the child cried “sorry” for losing a shoe.
He faces life behind bars.
Iheanacho was found guilty of murdering little Alex Malcolm in a fit of rage after a two-week trial at Woolwich Crown Court in the United Kingdom.
Heartbroken mum, Lilya Breha, desperately tried to save her boy on the night of the attack, but Alex’s injuries were too severe.
Lilya revealed the tot’s final moments to the jury, who also saw chilling CCTV of Iheanacho “sprinting home with the lifeless child in his arms.”
Jurors heard that Iheanacho had taken Alex with him to pick up DVDs and visit a friend on November 20, 2016.
On the way, the pair stopped at Mountsfield Park in Hither Green where a witness overheard the child saying ‘sorry’ for losing his shoe before he was attacked.
Jurors were shown footage of Iheanacho carrying Alex in a “fireman’s lift” away from the park and towards a taxi rank where he asked for a cab to Lilya’s home.
When he arrived at the address, Iheanacho attacked his partner to stop her calling an ambulance, and shouted: “Keep your f***ing mouth shut.”
Iheanacho suggested putting the schoolboy in a bath before wrapping him in a towel and assaulted Ms Breha when she would not stop screaming.
Ms Breha told the court: “Whatever he did to Alex, I feel he knew exactly what he was doing.”
Three months before the boy’s murder, Iheanacho wrote in a diary that he hit him.
He wrote in the entry entitled “Mistakes” that he “had to beat him” for being sick in a taxi, SUN reported.
Iheanacho and Breha started seeing each other in June last year when she was introduced to him by a friend while he was in prison.
When he was released, Iheanacho would regularly stay over and Ms Breha said he would be “very nice” to Alex and “do some homework with him.”
She added: “I felt that may be a good thing for my son to have a male person in his life.”
Ms Breha said on the day of the alleged attack, she felt “anxious” after the pair hadn’t returned by 6.30pm; but when she called, he “sounded very calm and said that nothing was wrong.”
She said he told her that Alex had lost his shoe and she panicked because it was cold outside.
Ms Breha told the court: “I said to him, ‘bring my son home right now and make sure you pick him up and hold him.’”
Iheanacho refused to put Alex on the phone before he hung up.
The killer later asked Ms Breha to meet him at the front door as he brought Alex home.
Describing the scene, she told the court: “I saw him holding Alex like a baby.
“He had no shoe and I just started screaming the moment I saw Alex.”
PUNCH
