Teen guilty of stabbing schoolboy to death on New Year’s Eve fireworks display in Primrose Hill

A teenager has been found guilty of stabbing a schoolboy to death as he watched fireworks on Primrose Hill to see in the New Year with friends.

Areece Lloyd-Hall, 18, has been found guilty at the Old Bailey of the murder of 16-year-old Harry Pitman on Wednesday.

Harry was with a group of friends watching fireworks on Primrose Hill when he was knifed in the neck following an argument just before midnight on New Year’s Eve 2023. 

Lloyd-Hall pushed forward and lunged at Harry with a pointed dagger, metres from where uniformed police officers were stationed.

In ‘shocking’ mobile phone footage played in court, a knife sheath is seen to fly through the air during the fast-paced incident.

Harry holds his neck, his white T-shirt covered in blood, as he pushes through crowds calling to officers for ‘help’.

He collapsed and died minutes later, shortly before midnight.

College student Lloyd-Hall, who was 16 at the time, claimed he thought he had only hit Harry with the sheath in an attempt to get Harry away from him.

He said: ‘I did not want him to lose his life.

‘I feel horrible for what I caused. It was not my intention.’

He said he ran off not realising what had happened because he was holding a knife and knew there were police officers nearby.

Harry’s grandad Philip Woolveridge, who works as a caretaker at his old school, told Metro: ‘It’s so difficult for us this time of year what with the second anniversary coming up. He was a wonderful boy that’s the truth. We miss him so much.’

Mr Woolveridge previously said his grandson, who was 6ft 3, ‘didn’t have a bad bone in his body’.

He told Metro the family would be supporting each other on the anniversary of their loss.

Harry, who lived in Tottenham, has four siblings and a close-knit family.

They said after his death he was a person who ‘always stood up for what was right’.