A drug dealer who stabbed a rival dealer to death after they clashed on a Milton Keynes housing estate was sentenced to life imprisonment on Monday, October 5, 2020, at Luton Crown Court and told he must serve a minimum of 20 years behind bars.
Tyriq Alowooja, 21, had driven onto the estate to sell drugs to a woman who had contacted him by phone.
As they sat in his car for the exchange, 22-year-old Jefferey Wiafe drove slowly past, having arrived on the Oxley Park Estate on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve last year to collect his stash of drugs from an address where they were being stored.
The place where Alowooja and his girlfriend, Brook Turrell, had pulled up for the deal was in Wiafe’s ‘patch’ and the scene was set for a vicious showdown.
There was already bad feeling between the pair and, after spotting each other, they got out of their vehicles to confront each other, with tragic consequences.
A fight broke out during which Wiafe was stabbed four times.
Two wounds were to each of his thighs, another was to his arm, but the fatal wound was to his chest.
Alowooja’s girlfriend had remained in their Volkswagen Polo and when he got back in the vehicle as Wiafe staggered off bleeding heavily and fatally injured, the pair drove off.
The pair appeared at Luton Crown Court on Monday, October 5, to be sentenced following a four week trial this summer.
Both had gone on trial charged with the murder Mr Wiafe, who was known to his customers as ‘Mitch’, ‘Whit’ or ‘Pepsi’.
Alowooja was found guilty, but 20-year-old Brook Turrell had been cleared of the murder at the direction of the judge during the trial following an application by her defence team that there was no case to answer against.
She was subsequently acquitted by the jury of assisting her boyfriend, Alowooja, following the killing.
At the start of their trial, Alowooja and Turrell had both admitted being concerned in the supply of a Class A drug.
Passing sentence today, Judge Charles Gratwicke told Alowooja: “You were convicted by the jury of the brutal and vicious murder of Jefferey Wiafe.”
The judge said one of the stab wounds had been delivered with such force it had severed the victim’s front left fifth rib before entering his heart.
“You are, in my judgement, a callous and ruthless individual who is prepared to unleash extreme violence to anyone who crosses your path,” said the judge.
During his trial, Alowooja had claimed he hadn’t been armed, but that Mr Wiafe ended up being stabbed after he tried to take his own knife out of his waistband and they grappled causing him to accidentally suffer the four stab wounds.
Rejecting his account, the judge told Alowooja: “I am satisfied it was you who took the knife to the scene.”
Alowooja and Turrell, who will be 21 later this week, had begun a relationship together in 2019 and she had moved in with him at his address in Vellan Avenue, Fishermead, Milton Keynes.
She quit her job to be his driver for his drug dealing enterprise.
On New Year’s Eve last year the pair had driven to London to buy Class A drugs that he planned to sell back in Milton Keynes.
After returning home with the drugs, Alowooja and his girlfriend drove to the Oxley Park Estate to meet the woman who had been on the phone to him requesting drugs.
There, she was spotted coming from the direction of the flats in Carradine Crescent and got into the back of the vehicle for the drug deal.
Moments later Wiafe drove slowly past in a Vauxhall Astra, which pulled up a short distance away.
Following the stabbing in Peck Court, police arrived 10 minutes later to find Wiafe lying in the centre of the road opposite the flats with people performing CPR on him.
He was rushed to hospital in an ambulance where he died a short while later.
In the early hours of New Year’s Day Alowooja got rid of the clothes he had been wearing along with the knife used.
Turrell was sentenced for being concerned in the supply of a controlled drug of class A to 18 months imprisonment, which was suspended for two years.
The judge told her: “Class A drugs, as this case arguably demonstrates, brings with them nothing but misery, degradation and sometimes death to those who become addicted to them.”
He said it was why the reason those involved in the supply of the class A drugs could expect to go to prison to mark society’s abhorrence at such criminal behaviour.
The judge said he had taken into account her age, good character and immaturity at the time and the fact she had been on remand in prison for the last nine months.
In addition to the suspended sentence, she was told she would have to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work.
Judge Gratwicke told her as she carries out the work “You should reflect upon the fact that drugs have brought you to this particular position and you will do well to bear this in mind every day for the rest of your life.”
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