Two men have been jailed for life after murdering a semi-professional footballer on a nightclub dancefloor in Birmingham.
Remy Gordon and Kami Carpenter fatally stabbed Cody Fisher on Boxing Day in 2022 after a minor altercation two days earlier.
Gordon will serve a minimum of 26 years, while Carpenter will spend at least 25 years behind bars.
During the trial, jurors were told that Mr Fisher had made brief and “unavoidable” contact with Mr Gordon’s back as he left a club in Solihull on Christmas Eve.
The 23-year-old – who played for Stratford Town and Bromsgrove Sporting – was stabbed in the chest at the Crane nightclub in Digbeth and died at the scene from a chest wound.
He was attacked with a weapon that had been smuggled through security, in what was described as a pre-planned “act of retribution”.
Gordon and Carpenter, who had denied the charges against them, had blamed each other for the fatal stabbing and were convicted last month.
In a victim impact statement, Cody’s mother Tracey said his family’s “life sentences” started on the day he was killed, which she described as the “most heartbreaking day in all of our lives”.
She described her son as “brave, fearless and the most genuine soul” she knew.
Addressing Gordon and Carpenter, she said there can “never be any forgiveness for what they have done to us”.
Ms Fisher added: “It is as though I too was stabbed straight through the heart. I have seen myself go from the happiest outgoing person, to fighting the hell out of just getting through each and every horrendous, never ending, day, in the abhorrent knowledge that my youngest son, my best friend, is never coming home to sleep in his bedroom, the room that I still cannot enter even to this day.”
The Crane nightclub has been permanently shut down after West Midlands Police said the venue posed “terrifying risks” to the public, with “blatant” drug use and “inadequate” security.
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