A supposed £25 cannabis debt has resulted in a 16-year-old boy from East Sussex being found guilty of murdering another teenager.

After a British Transport Police (BTP) investigation, the 16-year-old boy was convicted at Hove Crown Court on Wednesday, 5th August.

At a previous hearing, the boy had pleaded guilty to Manslaughter and Possession of a Bladed Article, and a 15-year-old boy was found guilty of assisting an Offender; a 17-year-old boy had already pleaded guilty to the same charge. They will all be sentenced on 2nd October.

On Wednesday 10 September 2025 around 5 pm, BTP and Sussex Police officers responded to reports of a stabbing at Seaford railway station in East Sussex, where 16-year-old Joshua Ingram was found seriously injured.

With paramedics also in attendance, Joshua was pronounced dead a short time later. Around 40 minutes later, the suspect was arrested at his home and taken into custody.

CCTV footage showed Joshua in Seaford town centre followed by the suspect, who followed Joshua into the station and stabbed him twice from behind with a 19cm hunting knife.

Joshua was critically injured and collapsed on the platform just moments later. When police officers examined the suspect’s phone, they found WhatsApp group chat messages, which revealed he knew Joshua and was irate over £25 he claimed Joshua supposedly owed him for cannabis.

The suspect had boasted on numerous occasions that he was going to harm Joshua, and was ‘ready to sit in a prison cell for 30 years over a £20 sheet’.

Almost immediately after the incident, the killer dropped the knife and clothing in a bag to the 17-year-old boy at his home, and around two hours later, the 17-year-old and 15-year-old went to dispose of them in the sea, but handed the bag to passing Sussex Police officers, telling them it had been given to them by the 16-year-old suspect.

In February 2025, a man was convicted of attempting to murder a British Transport Police special constable in a targeted attack at Preston station in Lancashire, and in March this year, Staffordshire Police officers attended Tamworth station following reports of a suspected murder in the station car park.

“Joshua Ingram’s life was tragically cut short in an attack that can only be described as vicious and cowardly. He was a young man with a proud and loving family and many friends, and at just 16 he had his whole future ahead of him. I can only hope that Joshua’s family and friends feel some small sense of justice today, though that can never compensate for their immeasurable loss. I’m grateful to the jury, who have seen through the suspect’s attempts to diminish his actions and found him guilty of murder today.”

BTP Detective Chief Inspector Paul Stanley, Senior Investigating Officer in the case