A YOUNG man has been jailed for at least 18 years for murdering a teenager in a street fight.

Stelios Paraschakis, 19, plunged a kitchen knife into the neck of 16-year-old Julian Knight, known as Buster, in Overton Road, Thamesmead, last July.

He, his girlfriend Amy Curran and another man attacked the group Buster was with that night after two members of the group allegedly set fire to the fence of Paraschakis' home, in nearby Rushdene.

Paraschakis had denied murder and claimed he was acting in self defence.

Sentencing him to life imprisonment at the Old Bailey on Friday, Judge Giles Forrester said Paraschakis had been driven by revenge.

He told him: "This was a cowardly attack upon an unarmed youth who himself had done you no harm and who posed no threat to you."

Curran, 18, of Fendyke Road, Belvedere, was sentenced to a total of 18 months in custody for affray and perverting the course of justice by lying to police in witness statements.

* Full story in the Bexley Extra (Friday, June 15).