A gang member who stabbed a store manager to death during a botched raid has been given a life sentence. Kobina Essel, 19, of east London, was told he would have to serve a minimum of 20 years for murder. Jamie Simpson, 33, was stabbed in the neck with a 10in kitchen knife during the hold-up at a Matalan store in Hackney, east London, in March 2008. Knifeman Essel - known as "Aggro" - was found guilty of murder by an Old Bailey jury last month. He was also given 11 years concurrent detention for conspiracy to rob. Judge Martin Stephens said: "This case demonstrates in a vivid way the horrors of knife crime and the terrible consequences to the victim, his family and friends and to society as a whole." He told Essel: "You went into this with your eyes open. You went in with a knife and you did not hesitate to use it." Essel's accomplices, Anthony Maina, 20, of Canning Town, and Randy Osei-Owusu, 17, of Poplar, as well as robbery organiser Simeon Jumah, 25, of Manor Park, all east London, were convicted of manslaughter. The robbers had planned to steal between £20,000 and £30,000 in weekend takings from the store but fled empty-handed after the killing. It emerged after the trial that, at the time of the raid, Maina had been on police bail for the fatal stabbing of a teenager during a mobile phone robbery five months earlier. He was later convicted of the murder of 17-year-old Rizwan Darbar and jailed for life with a minimum term of 14 years. Maina was given indeterminate sentences for public protection with minimum terms of six years for manslaughter and five years for the robbery. | 
