Kieran, 18, was heading to look for a job when Imran Hussain, 27, walked up to him and “without warning” stabbed him four times in the chest, Manchester Crown Court was told

A teenage gap-year student was knifed to death in the street in broad daylight by a “laughing” stranger in Manchester, a jury has heard.

Kieran Crump-Raiswell, 18, was heading to look for a job when Imran Hussain, 27, walked up to him and “without warning” stabbed him four times in the chest, Manchester Crown Court was told.

Witnesses to the shocking scene in Whalley Range said Hussain appeared to be “sniggering” as he ran to his car and drove off, jurors heard.

The killing was the second of two street assaults committed on total strangers within 12 days in January.

Mature student Hussain, from Bracknell, Berkshire, drove from his student flat in Coventry on January 4 and punched a man in the face in Nottingham and ran off.

On January 16, he travelled up to Manchester from Coventry.

Peter Wright QC, prosecuting, said: “It is the prosecution case that on this occasion, fortified by the apparent ease at which a stranger could be attacked, this time he travelled to Manchester armed with a knife and intending to kill someone.”

Hussain drove around Whalley Range and Chorlton in the early afternoon for around a hour.

“He was driving around the area, stopping and then carrying on,” he said. “We say he was now looking for a suitable victim.”

Hussain parked his vehicle in Upper Chorlton Road and then got out with a knife as his victim walked along nearby, he continued.

Mr Wright said: “Kieran crossed the road and then entirely without warning he approached him and he stabbed him to the front and back of his chest four times before running off.”

He said the defendant initially denied involvement in either of the incidents when he was arrested days later.

But he “changed his tune” when the evidence against him began to unravel.

Hussain went on to claim he had been hearing “threatening and abusive voices” and that he travelled to the two cities to confront them.

The jury was told that Hussain pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.

Mr Wright said, though, that Hussain’s medical defence was “contrived by him as a last resort that only arose once he realised it could be proved he was the culprit”.

Hussain, of Tilehurst Lane, denies murder.

The trial is expected to last a week.