Man guilty of murdering wife after blaming innocent teenage son

Amidu Koroma, 48, will be sentenced on Monday

A delivery driver has been found guilty of murdering his wife, after covering up the crime by setting their home alight and blaming his teenage son.

Amidu Koroma, 48, stabbed Mariam Kamara, 46, to death at the property in Brixton, south London, in January 2022.

The Old Bailey heard he denied being responsible for her death and tried to blame his innocent son instead.

Jurors were told Koroma had a "toxic" relationship with Ms Kamara and she feared he was going to kill her.

Koroma had claimed his son, 19, was troubled and had killed his mother while re-enacting a scene from the Netflix show You.

Earlier in the trial, prosecutor Zoe Johnson KC told the court a fire had broken out in an upstairs bedroom in the early hours of 24 January.

As flames and smoke billowed from a first-floor window, Koroma calmly told emergency workers his wife was trapped inside, the court heard.

Ms Johnson said Ms Kamara's badly burned body was later found lying on her bed surrounded by the distinctive smell of accelerant.

She added an empty can and funnel were discarded on the ground floor and the victim's blood was identified on bannisters near the bottom of the stairs.

'Refused to leave house'

A post-mortem examination concluded Ms Kamara had died from stab wounds to the neck and chest before the fire started.

Jurors were also told an analysis of Koroma's clothes revealed heat damage caused by exposure to flames, and a kitchen knife was found in a knife block with Ms Kamara's blood on it.

The fire broke out in a house in Railton Road, Brixton, in the early hours of 24 January

Ms Johnson said the defendant denied going into the bedroom but had suffered a burn to his foot from close proximity to the flames.

She said "the background evidence and the scientific evidence all point to his sole involvement in Mariam's death".

"There is no scientific evidence to suggest that [his son] did anything other than sleep in his bedroom that night until his father woke him up to get out of the house," Ms Johnson continued.

Under cross-examination, Koroma's son denied being unstable and killing his mother after having a bad parents' evening.

The court heard his parents' relationship had all but ended, and Koroma had left the family home to live with another woman several times, only to return pleading for forgiveness.

Jurors were told there were frequent rows over money and Ms Kamara only stayed for the sake of her son, who was about to go to university.

She told a friend she feared Koroma, who is set to be sentenced on Monday, would kill her and that he had refused to leave the house.

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