Beaming for the camera alongside his football heroes in a sweet picture captured by his proud mother, he looks like a typical nine-year-old boy. In another, he is in the stands at Leicester City, wearing his team’s kit as he cheers them on.
But just six years later, this angelic looking schoolboy is facing jail for the brutal killing of an 80-year-old dog walker – after bragging to friends: ‘Feds know it is me’. He also sent a friend two ‘laughing emojis’ after reading the man was seriously injured.
The boy pulled on a balaclava before launching his attack on frail Bhim Kohli, beating him with a slider shoe as he cowered on his knees before kicking and punching him leaving him lying on the ground yards from his home in agony.
His schoolfriend, a girl aged just 12 at the time, filmed the ‘pure violence’ inflicted on the elderly man and could be heard laughing in a video she filmed on her phone.
The boy, 14, later boasted about the sickening attack on September 1 last year. In reply to a message saying an 80-year-old had been ‘smacked up’ in the park, the boy wrote: ‘I did that. I watched him pull a knife on a girl and hit her.
‘I didn’t mean to batter him. It was one hit and then my anger turned in. I regret it man, I do. I f***ed my life up. Everything is gone. I am sorry bro, I am.’
Describing a video of the attack during a police interview, the girl said the boy ‘slapped’ Mr Kohli ‘round the head with his slider’. Asked whether she got any enjoyment out of it, she replied: ‘Not really but it was a bit funny at the time.’
A new family photograph of Bhim Kohli which was issued by Leicestershire Police today
Aerial pictures of the scene taken after Mr Kohli was attacked in September last year
Susan Kohli, Bhim Kohli’s daughter, read a statement on the Leicester Crown Court steps after the verdicts today, saying: ‘My dad was brutally and cruelly taken away from us’
After both defendants were convicted of manslaughter at Leicester Crown Court on Tuesday, family members sobbed – with one walking out in tears. The teenagers will be sentenced next month when a judge will consider lifting their anonymity.
Neither can be named because of their age. But the Daily Mail has pieced together the boy’s descent from football-mad schoolboy to vicious thug.
Born in 2009 the boy grew up in a 1960s semi with his unemployed mother and two older siblings.
Neighbours painted a picture of a loving, caring home – albeit without a father figure on the scene.
Sharing the images of her son on Facebook, when he was aged around eight or nine, his mother gave a nod to his Leicester City hero – but in a sign of trouble to come, admitted he was a ‘nightmare 97 per cent of the time’.
A mother of five, 64, who has known the boy’s family for more than 30 years said his arrest ‘came as a real shock’. She said he was ‘not the sort of boy you’d expect to be in trouble, let alone something as serious as this’.
But away from home it appears the boy had already developed a reputation among his peers.
Three other teenagers who were with him on the day of the fatal attack told police how they fled when they saw the boy approach Mr Kohli – fearing what he was about to do.
When asked why they had run away, one said: ‘Because we know, like, how [he] is …Like we know how [he] is, so he’s either gonna, like, either start on him or, like be mean to him or something’.
Mr Kohli, pictured with his wife Satinder, died last year from the effects of a spinal cord injury
Bhim Kohli walks his dog in Braunstone near Leicester before he was killed in September 2024
A separate clip from Leicestershire Police showed the teenagers running away from the scene
They were right to worry: moments after approaching Mr Kohli the boy was caught on camera slapping him with a slider shoe as he cowered on the ground.
The elderly man was then subjected to further ‘gratuitous’ and ‘intense’ violence and was found by his children lying in agony on the ground. Mr Kohli, a keen gardener who tended to his allotment daily, told them he had been kicked and punched and called a ‘P***’.
He was taken to hospital but died the next day, on September 2. A post-mortem examination revealed the cause of Mr Kohli’s death to be a neck injury ‘causing trauma to the spinal cord’. He also suffered broken ribs.
Before the attack on Mr Kohli, the boy had taken his balaclava out of his Gucci bag and put it on which the prosecution said was ‘in preparation for violence’. Asked why he had a balaclava or ‘bally’ as he called it, he replied simply, ‘Fashion’.
The boy’s trial heard how after fleeing the park and leaving his victim for dead, he searched for news stories about the attack and then, ten seconds later, for Adele tickets.
He read a BBC News story about the attack and sent group messages on Snapchat to the others he had been with in the park.
He also tried to find out if others had been arrested. Then when asked by a friend if he was ‘sh***ing it’, he replied with two laughing emojis and wrote ‘Nah, chilling bro’.
Other friends messaged the boy on the platform asking about the incident. He told one: ‘I did that. I watched him pull a knife on a girl and hit her.
‘I didn’t mean to batter him. It was one hit and then my anger turned in. I regret it man, I do. I f***ed my life up. Everything is gone. I am sorry bro, I am.’
The boy later messaged his mother to say: ‘Police are looking for me because of Franklin [Park]. I can’t come back tonight.’
Bhim Kohli, 80, sustained fractured ribs and a broken neck in the attack in September last year
She replied: ‘Going on the run ain’t gonna help anything, just come home and get it sorted please. I love you all the world and more, you are my son. If you don’t want me stressed come home, just making it worse for yourself, come home.’
However, the boy asked a friend if he could stay at their house, because he was ‘in a Fed [police] chase’, and ‘had 10 officers after him’.
He went on to make further claims to Snapchat users that Mr Kohli had produced a knife, but he was told by one: ‘He’s 80. You don’t do that to an old man. You don’t do that. You’re vile.’
At 8.21pm on September 2, about 25 minutes before Kohli died, he sent a laughing emoji to friends and said: ‘Feds know it is me. Got my name and picture.’
The boy’s mother continued to plead with him to return home after she was visited by police.
At 9.23pm he asked her who else was in the house, saying he ‘just wanted to walk in, get something to eat and drink, and sit down’.
He also asked for £4 so he could ‘get a bus to Hinckley’. She replied: ‘Why you running? Stop, please. Please just come home. The police ain’t here. They left hours ago.’
His last message to a friend said he was ‘at yard [his house] grabbing money, then on a bus to Hinckley then on run’. He was arrested moments later by officers who found him in a bush.
Mr Kohli’s wife Satinder lays a floral tribute to her late husband by the park last September
Giving evidence in court, the bravado displayed in messages to friends had disappeared.
Dressed in a white shirt tucked into tracksuit bottoms, he repeatedly glanced at his tearful mother in the public evidence as he was questioned in the witness box.
He claimed he had slapped Mr Kohli in the face with his slider out of ‘instinct’ after they were tussling over the shoe and ‘ran at him’ before pushing him over to defend the girl because he thought the elderly man was going to push or hit her.
He said he made up the lies about Mr Kohli as ‘I did not want people to think bad of me…’ but admitted to having ‘anger issues’.
The court was told that after his arrest, he wrote a letter to a support worker, in which he said he regretted what he had done. In it he wrote: ‘My ex broke up with me and I was struggling with that so I kind of just needed anger etc releasing’.
He went on to say: ‘I’m so nervous well scared and worried. I accept I did it and I am doing time. I am just scared about how long I have to do.’
When told the letter would have to be disclosed he replied: ‘That’s my manslaughter plea gone’.
Police at Franklin Park following the attack last September, after the area was cordoned off
And what of his female ‘accomplice’ – who now also faces jail after being convicted of manslaughter?
The court heard she and the boy had become friendly in the weeks before the attack, regularly exchanging messages.
It was the girl – aged just 12 at the time – who pointed out the elderly man in the park, and she laughed as she filmed him being hit with the shoe and even zoomed in. She also filmed him lying on the ground in agony.
Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu KC told jurors: ‘She knew there would be violence and she had a desire to capture it – and capturing it provided encouragement for the violence to be meted out.’
The court heard the girl regularly ‘recorded violence’ on her mobile phone, and had dozens of other recordings showing children fighting each other and another where an unidentified victim was called a ‘P***’ and had something thrown over him.
The three video clips of the attack on Mr Kohli were recovered from the girl’s mobile phone in a section of Snapchat called ‘my eyes only’ which requires a code for access, which the prosecution said was an attempt to hide the evidence.
The court heard girl had a picture of Mr Kohli on her phone, taken a week before the attack, and pointed him out to the boy when they saw him in the park on September 1 following previous altercations with him.
The picture was taken around the same time as he was attacked with prosecutors accusing her of keeping the image on her phone so she could ‘target him’.
She was accused of ‘egging’ on the boy, and remained with him during the attack to ‘support’ him when other teenagers they were with ran away.
Mr Kohli’s wife, Satinder Kaur, carries some of the condolence cards left by other mourners
In a police interview she was asked if the video showing Mr Kohli being slapped with the shoe had given her enjoyment she said: ‘Not really but it was a bit funny at the time’.
Her neighbours also expressed shock that she was involved. One described the girl as ‘always respectful’ but admitted that they had not seen so much of her since she had started secondary school.
‘We were all really shocked,’ she said. ‘I had heard the boy has a reputation as a trouble maker to say the least. I think he was suspended a few times but I had never heard of her being rude to anyone.’
But others said she had changed in recent years and that she did not seem to be taking what had happened seriously.
The woman, who did not want to be named, said: ‘There was a time when we were walking home. A group of lads started shouting, ‘Murderer’ at her. She just laughed like it was a joke and said, ‘No, I’m not’ and went over to them.
‘She didn’t seem to be taking it all that seriously. I felt like saying something, I was thinking I don’t get how you find this funny.
‘When I was young I wouldn’t have found that funny. I wouldn’t have stood there filming and laughing at what was happening to an old person.’
Flowers left at the scene at the entrance to Franklin Park where Mr Kohli was allegedly attacked
Another neighbour, who was of Asian descent and who knew the girl well, choked back tears as she recalled what had happened and how social media and mobile phones was influencing children in the area.
She said: ‘He could have been my Dad. Now all those kids who were there have been to our house so many times.
‘I have fed them. I am just sick of the racism. For me, it’s like we’ve gone back decades. The P word is back with a vengeance when I leave the house….everything is so toxic round here now.
‘You have the likes of Kanye West using the swastika and kids are copying that.
‘You’d think something as bad as this would bring people together but the opposite has happened. People hide away, embarrassed. It is just terrible what has happened.’
Video footage issued by Leicestershire Police today showed Mr Kohli in the moments before the attack, before a separate clip showed the teenagers running away.
The girl, now 13, and the boy, now 15, who both cannot be named because of their ages, were convicted by a jury at Leicester Crown Court on Tuesday.
The boy had also been charged with murder, but was found not guilty on that count after jurors deliberated for six hours and 46 minutes following a six-week trial.
The youths, who sat in the dock for the first time since their trial began, appeared upset as the verdicts were returned by the foreman of the jury.
After the verdicts were returned, Mr Justice Turner further remanded the 15-year-old boy into custody and granted the female defendant bail, but said this was ‘no indication’ of what would be decided when she is sentenced
He told the jury: ‘It’s quite clear from what I have seen that you have been following the case closely and have been extremely conscientious in the discharge of your duty.’
Flowers and a note left for Mr Kohli, which reads ‘To Bin, always a true and dearest friend’
Susan Kohli, Bhim Kohli’s daughter, read a statement on the court steps after the verdicts into her father’s killing.
She said: ‘My dad was brutally and cruelly taken away from us when walking our dog Rocky in the park close to our home.
‘He was a devoted life partner to my mum for 55 years. He was a loving dad, grandad, brother and uncle, a retired businessman and a close friend to many, including people who lived in our local community.
‘He was an amazing man who loved life. He never took himself seriously, he was good fun to be around and very chatty.
‘He was the person who knitted our family together and we miss him every second of every day. Our home feels so empty without him and will never be the same.
‘Every time my mum opens the front door she thinks about what happened to her husband. Listening to the enormity of what happened, what dad was subjected to, will never leave us.
‘We feel angry and disgust towards the teenagers who took dad away from us. They humiliated him, an 80-year-old man, assaulted him, filmed it and laughed at him.
‘Dad did not deserve this and wouldn’t wish this on anyone else.’
Mr Kohli was with dog Rocky. He walked the dog in the park every day after tending to his allotment
Speaking after the case, Detective Chief Inspector Mark Sinski, of Leicestershire Police, said Mr Kohli was a ‘much-loved grandfather’ who was ‘enjoying the simple things in life’ such as spending time with his family, tending to his allotment and walking his dog.
He said: ‘(Mr Kohli) used to grow vegetables for his neighbours, and a lot of his neighbours used to call him ‘grandad’, both as a term of affection and as respect to the absolute gentleman he was.
‘Clearly the fatal attack of an elderly man in a public park close to his home address by children has shocked the community and the family to the core. This should never have happened. Mr Kohli was a true family man. He was the centre of his family – a very beloved husband.
‘His family have been absolutely devastated by his loss. He was in the last stage of his life, but very fit and healthy and had a long life ahead of him still.
‘There’s been, from the boy, some superficial comment of remorse. I know (Mr Kohli’s) family’s position is that any remorse spoken isn’t true and it isn’t sincere.
‘This is a family – a South Asian family – that have lived without racist incidents within their community for many, many years.
‘It’s extremely distasteful – any sort of racist motivation, even in part. And tragic that children should have that motivation. It’s a no-win situation and it should never have happened.’
Speaking alongside members of Bhim Kohli’s family on the steps of Leicester Crown Court after the verdicts, Mr Sinski added: ‘The circumstances surrounding this case are truly tragic and heartbreaking.
‘On that warm summer evening of Sunday the 1st of September last year, Mr Kohli was simply doing what he did every day, walking his dog on the park just a few yards from his home address.
‘But instead of being able to enjoy an evening stroll with his dog, Rocky, he was confronted by a teenage boy, who with the encouragement of the girl he was with, attacked an 80-year-old man – a defenceless man – and left him in agony on the floor.
‘Sadly, those injuries proved fatal and Mr Kohli died in hospital. His death has left not only a family grieving the loss of a beloved husband, father and grandfather, but the wider community too.’
Mr Sinski added: ‘Both the case and the subsequent trial have been complex and extremely sensitive due to the young ages of both defendants.
‘Today’s verdict will now mean that they will have to face the enormity of their actions that evening and the consequences that will now follow.’