A teacher said she invited a 15-year-old pupil to have lunch with her moments before he was stabbed to death at school.
Teacher Claire Staniforth told the jury at Sheffield Crown Court that Harvey Willgoose had been worried about rumours of a knife being used in a previous altercation at the school five days earlier.
The teenager was allegedly knifed by another 15-year-old, who cannot be named, twice in front of other pupils at All Saints Catholic School in Sheffield on February 3.
Ms Staniforth said she met Harvey hours before he died and even invited him to have his lunch with her before the stabbing.
She told Sheffield Crown Court on Thursday: ‘He said he wasn’t going to be coming into school because he’d heard there had been a knife.’
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The teacher explained that there had been rumours on social media of a knife being involved in the lockdown incident on January 29, but the court heard no weapon was found by police.
She said: ‘My reply to Harvey was that I wouldn’t have been at work if somebody had had a knife.
‘He said something about being stabbed and put his hands up and said “as if anyone’s going to stab me”.’
Just before the alleged attack, Harvey and Ms Staniforth then had a friendly telephone call, in which he called his teacher his ‘bestie’ and told her about a girl from another school, the court heard.
She said he was laughing as he said: ‘Don’t tell her anything about me.’
Ms Staniforth said she told him he could come and have his dinner with her.
She said: ‘But he never arrived.’
The teacher then grabbed some food from the dining hall and returned to her office when she was told Harvey had been stabbed, the jury heard.
She recounted sprinting to where it happened and became emotional as she added: ‘I told him I was there.’
Ms Staniforth and Harvey had developed a positive relationship because she helped him with attendance issues, she told the court.
She said: ‘We had a good laugh together about things.
‘When he did attend school he would come to see me and make sure I was OK, and I’d make sure he was OK.’
The teacher added: ‘He made me laugh. We’d made each other laugh – a bit cheeky sometimes, but he would never overstep the boundaries with me.’
The jury of eight women and four men have been shown CCTV footage of the moments when Harvey was stabbed by the defendant, who cannot be named.
The jurors have been told that the teenager has admitted manslaughter but denies murder.
He has also admitted possession of a knife on school premises.
The stabbing followed previous altercations in the school involving the defendant, which have been described to the jury.
This includes one five days before Harvey was stabbed, which led to the school going into lockdown.
Prosecutors said two members of staff physically intervened in the dispute between two other students, with the defendant being restrained as he tried to get involved.
It was the defendant’s claim that one boy had a knife that triggered a school lockdown, the court heard, but police never found a weapon.
Ms Staniforth told the court she had become suspicious about a group of students before the January 29 incident and spoke to the defendant.
The teenager told the teacher there had been ‘something in the library’ and another student had called him ‘a p**** and a b***’, according to Ms Staniforth.
Ms Staniforth told the jury that the defendant said to her that the other boy had his hands in his pockets.
The teacher claimed he said to the other boy: ‘What have you got in there, do you want me to come and take it off you and I’ll kill you with it?’
The teacher understood the defendant as talking about a knife, she told the court.
Gul Nawaz Hussain KC, defending, told jurors last week: ‘(The defendant) did not set out to kill or seriously hurt anyone.
‘The defence say (the defendant’s) actions that day were the end result of a long period of bullying, poor treatment and violence, things that built one upon another until he lost control and did tragically what we’ve all seen.’
The trial continues.
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