Minicab driver killed by stranger

An illegal Albanian immigrant stabbed to death a defenceless father of five on a petrol station forecourt, the Old Bailey heard today.

His victim, minicab driver Quamar Mirza, was a stranger and described as a hard-working, religious family man.

The mentally disturbed knifeman ran home and bit his girlfriend, saying he wanted to drink her blood because his mouth was dry, the court was told. He was released by police that night when she refused to press charges, only to threaten another woman in the street.

Mark Gjoni pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

He was sent to Broadmoor mental hospital indefinitely after being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and a "grave and immediate danger to the public".

The Common Serjeant of London, Peter Beaumont, told Gjoni he had "taken the life of a man who was just going about his business".

Gjoni, real name Besnik Kume, 37, had been in Britain less than nine months before he stabbed Mr Mirza in Cricklewood in March last year.

He had entered Britain on a false passport after serving two-and-a-half years in prison in his homeland for stabbing another man. Since coming to Britain with his Romanian girlfriend, Katrina Gaspar, he had not found work. He spoke little English.

On the day before the stabbing he had complained of being depressed because he missed his family and friends in Albania and people in London had accused him of being scruffy.

In the early hours of the morning he went to the service station in Cricklewood Broadway to buy cigarettes, carrying a kitchen knife with a seven- inch blade.

Richard Horwell, prosecuting, said: "Mr Mirza drove into the petrol station which, as a local minicab driver, he used regularly. As he filled his car with petrol, Gjoni walked to the forecourt, bought his cigarettes, approached Mr Mirza from behind, turned him around and stabbed him forcibly in the stomach so the handle broke

and the blade remained embedded in his victim."

Mr Mirza was taken to the Central Middlesex Hospital where he was pronounced dead from the stomach wound. A post mortem showed that Gjoni had rained a series of blows on his victim.

Running home, Gjoni told Miss Gaspar "he wanted to bite her and drink her blood because his mouth was dry". said Mr Horwell. When he grabbed her and bit her, she called police and he was arrested, but officers did not know about his earlier victim.

When Gjoni was released he followed a woman, Simone Ambaye, as she walked down Cricklewood Lane in the early hours.She took refuge in a pizza store and rang police. As officers approached him he produced a knife but dropped it on command.