A train tracks killer who bragged “I stabbed him fully” after attacking a student on a railway line has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 23 years.
Dino Donaldson, 22, murdered Anojan Gnaneswaran, 21, at a railway station in south-west London in January 2024.
Donaldson had followed the victim onto the tracks and stabbed him in the chest after a fight broke out on the platform between two groups of men over a drug deal of £50 for 10 MDMA tablets.
Mr Gnaneswaran, who studied accounting and finance, died at the scene at Strawberry Hill station in Twickenham shortly after midnight on January 9 2024.
Less than an hour later, Donaldson, who as 19 at the time of the attack, was caught on CCTV on a night bus smiling and laughing.
He was also recorded on the audio of a doorbell camera saying: “I stabbed him through the back bro, I stabbed him fully.
“I watched it and I felt it go in him, yeah.”
He was found by police hiding in a cupboard when officers came to arrest him at his home three days after the attack.
Officers found 74 wraps of crack and heroin in his bedroom with a street value of more than £1,000.
Donaldson, of Ealing, west London, was found guilty of murder in a retrial at the Old Bailey in April.
At the same court on Friday, Judge Angela Rafferty KC sentenced him to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 23 years.
The judge said that an initial interaction between a group Donaldson was with and Mr Gnaneswaran developed into a “confrontation” after Mr Gnaneswaran’s younger brother Ashvin and some friends arrived.
“Tensions rose and by the time of the encounter on platform two members of your group were being challenged and asked to identify themselves,” Judge Rafferty told Donaldson.
“What had begun as an unpleasant encounter between two groups of young men rapidly descended into violent chaos.”
The court heard Donaldson stabbed Mr Gnaneswaran once in the abdomen, leading him to flee onto the tracks.
The defendant followed him and stabbed him in the chest as he lay on the tracks.
“This was a savage and merciless killing of a helpless young man who was on the ground,” the judge said.
Mitigating, Donaldson’s barrister Dean George KC said his client has a “significant history of substantial trauma which has been verified by social services” and had suffered from “physical punishment, emotional punishment and mental punishment”.
In a statement from Mr Gnaneswaran’s brother Ashvin, who witnessed his brother’s murder, read to the court by the prosecution, he said: “I know I will never meet anyone like him ever again.”
“I refused to believe my brother passed away to the point where I continued doing CPR even though I know he’d stopped breathing,” he said.
In Mr Gnaneswaran’s father Nesar Gnaneswaran’s statement, read to the court by prosecutor Maria Karaiskos KC, he said his eldest son was academically gifted but also talented in sports and held a black belt in karate.
“We were lucky to have him in our lives for the short time we did,” the victim’s father said. “But he should still be here.
“Our family will never be the same.
“The impact of his loss is so much more than can be written down here or conveyed to the court.”
The court heard Donaldson was first convicted of possession of a knife in a trial at Southwark Crown Court in 2025.
He had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess class A drugs, in relation to the purchase of ecstasy tablets from the victim, for which he was sentenced to six months imprisonment to run concurrently to his life sentence.
BTP Detective Chief Inspector Paul Attwell said: “What started as an argument over a drug deal ended in a young man’s future being stolen from him by a remorseless criminal.
“Donaldson showed his true colours as a coward by arming himself with a knife that night. His cowardice has continued by never accepting responsibility and admitting his crime – thankfully the jury saw through his lies.
“He will live the rest of his life knowing he has taken someone else’s, and he deserves every minute of his 23-year minimum sentence.
“Anojan’s family have been left with an unfillable void in their lives after their talented son and brother was taken from them in the most brutal circumstances imaginable.
“I want to pay tribute to them all, for the strength, dignity and patience they’ve shown throughout this case.”
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