A teenager has been handed a life sentence for murdering a schoolboy, after his mother gave him up to police and said he had killed someone.
Joshua Delbono, 19, was found guilty of killing 16-year-old Charley Bates in Somerset on the evening of Sunday 31 July last year.
Delbono was told he must serve a minimum of 21 years in prison.
He stabbed Charley with a knife multiple times in a car park in the town of Radstock.
Charley suffered a stab wound to his chest and to his arm and was pronounced dead about 30 minutes later.
Delbono fled the scene, heading to Shearwater Lake where he burned the clothes he had been wearing during the attack – police would later find mobile phone footage of this.
Officers then received a phone call at 12.45am the following morning – about six hours after the stabbing. It was from Delbono’s mother.
She was turning her son in to the police and said: “My son’s killed someone… he’s in my house now but I can’t let him go anywhere.”
Charley Bates
Delbono’s mother also told the call handler: “He’s here. I’ve told him I’ve got to do it.”
She said she felt “sick” by what had happened.
She then passed the phone to Delbono who admitted the stabbing, claiming he was trying to protect others in the car park.
He falsely claimed that he had discarded the knife at the scene, but during the trial conceded that he had thrown it into Shearwater Lake.
Officers arrested Delbono, from Frome, on suspicion of murder a short time later.
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Detective Chief Inspector Mark Almond said: “Charley had his whole life ahead of him and it was cut short by Joshua Delbono.
“The vigil held in his memory in Radstock in the days after this senseless tragedy highlights how his death affected the community and how popular a person he was.
“Such incidents are thankfully rare in Radstock, but the devastating consequences knife crime has on families and communities is clear for all to see and it is why we are committed to work with our partners to do all that we can to prevent more tragedies like this from happening.”
