Two brothers charged with the east London murder of 26-year-old Russell Brown—who had volunteered to donate a kidney for a sick relative—have been acquitted at the Old Bailey.
Grant Carpenter, 34, from Bethnal Green’s Nelson Gardens estate off Hackney Road where Russell was stabbed in September, was found not guilty along with his brother Lee, 27, after a three-week trial that ended yesterday.
Friends of Russell plan to hold a vigil outside the Old Bailey from 10am on Friday in sympathy with his family.
“Russell was the most loving, caring person who was always full of life,” family friend and former neighbour Patricia Stafford, 34, tell’s tomorrow’s East London Advertiser. “He was always smiling, always had time to stop and talk.
“We were devastated by what happened. It still hasn’t sunk in.”
Russell, a labourer from Bow, died at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel on September 12, a day after the stabbing at Nelson Gardens.
It was the same hospital where he was due to undergo surgery to remove a kidney that he was donating to his desperately ill aunt who was waiting for a transplant. Russell had registered as her kidney donor.
The stabbing followed a fight that broke out at a party at a friend’s second-floor maisonette in Zander Court which spilled out onto the courtyard.
The London air-ambulance helicopter based at Whitechapel landed in Warner Green open space next to the estate to air-lift Russell to the hospital, but he died 24 hours later.
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