'It's an absolutely horrendous way to lose a loved one, over something so ridiculous'

After police discovered a man dying in the road, they searched far and wide for any possible reason to explain why he had ended up in such a desperate state.

Sadiq Al-Lami - just 30 when he ultimately died - had been stabbed 11 times. It was a ferocious, vicious attack, which could have been suggestive of something more sinister in the background. But almost a year to the day, and as Sadiq’s killers have faced justice, detectives have not found anything beyond the build up to his murder that could have led to it.

Instead, they believe it was a killing fuelled by a momentary flash of ‘road rage’, the kind of thing that can happen on streets in Manchester every day. But when a knife became involved, everything changed. It ripped a son away from his parents and a brother away from his siblings. He was the glue that held the brothers together.

His younger brother Mostapha cannot make sense of losing Sadiq. “You can't,” he said. “There isn't an answer that I can give.”

“Sadiq was subjected to a really prolonged and vicious attack,” said Detective Inspector Alex Wilkinson, the lead officer on the case who has helped the traumatised family through a horrendous process. “It seems completely senseless and almost ludicrous that something like a road rage incident could lead to that.

“That’s why we carefully considered whether there was some other motive or something in the background to this. We were never able to establish one.

“It’s my belief now that there never was one. I think that anyone who had come across that group in that car that night, and had perhaps challenged them, that could have happened to them.

“They obviously took a knife to the scene, there was at least one knife in the car. It just seems completely