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Kian Moulton had been made a suspect in a string of attacks(Image: West Midlands Police / SWNS)

A schoolboy was free to stab a 12-year-old boy to death after the authorities missed a string of chances to stop him.

Kian Moulton, 15, had been made a suspect in four separate assaults, including two on police officers, in the months before he murdered Leo Ross as he made his way home from school.

Moulton was previously excluded from mainstream education and a specialist pupil referral unit after breaking a teacher’s nose and bringing a knife to class. He also hurled a brick through a shop window near his house around six months before the killing and neighbours said he had a “reputation for violence”.

Moulton had witnessed domestic abuse from a young age and had expressed suicidal thoughts and made “occasional attempts” at suicide.

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Leo Ross, 12, did not know his killer(Image: West Midlands Police / SWNS)

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Leo’s dad Christopher said last month that there were “multiple opportunities” to arrest the boy before he knifed his son in the stomach on January 21 last year.

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Moulton was detained for life, with a minimum term of 13 years, at Birmingham Crown Court last month. Mr Ross said he wanted to know why Leo’s killer was not caught earlier.

He said: “100 per cent he was let down by the authorities. Maybe after the first assault, definitely after the second, let alone the third assault, and then the murder, do you know what I mean? I don’t know how they didn’t see he was there and got him sooner… I don’t understand it.”

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Moulton speaks to officers soon after the attack(Image: West Midlands Police / SWNS)

Moulton was born in Birmingham on March 23, 2010, when his father, a former electrician, was working as an HGV driver, and his mother was employed as a site manager.

He was raised in a terraced house in the city’s Yardley Wood area, just minutes from Trittiford Mill Park, where he killed Leo and viciously attacked three elderly women in as many days in January last year.

CCTV obtained by the Daily Mail showed Moulton assaulting a woman in a shop near his home in August 2024. Police were called, but no arrest was made. Moulton returned to the shop the next day and smashed its glass front door. Police only took a statement from staff after Leo’s murder, five months later, the Daily Mail reports.

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Moulton on his bike shortly before the murder(Image: PA)

The shop’s manager said: “The police could have done something before. That boy [Leo] could still be living today if they did.” West Midlands Police confirmed it had investigated the shop assault, but “unfortunately, no one was ever identified as responsible”.

An ex-partner of Moulton’s father claimed she was subject to a campaign of harassment by the teenager during 2024. She said police were repeatedly called out to her house on bogus reports, including that she was hiding a dead body. The woman said Moulton had posed as her to make an online report that “Kian was in my front garden and he was going to stab me with a knife”.

In the days before the murder the killer targeted three elderly women. The first, Valerie Mann, 82, was walking in Trittiford Mill Park when she was approached from behind and pushed into a water-logged ditch. She saw Moulton standing over her.

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Detective Inspector Joe Davenport outside court(Image: PA)

“I tried to drown you, but now I’m going to kill you instead,” he said before using her walking stick to hit her in the head repeatedly, leaving her seriously injured. He then posed as an innocent bystander and told a passer-by: “There’s an old lady in the water and she needs help.”

Moulton attacked Christine Canty, 72, the next day, leaving her bleeding from a head wound. On January 21, he targeted Diana Copplestone, 79.

Later that day Moulton murdered Leo who was unknown to him. He was caught on CCTV cycling around as Leo made his way home from school in Yardley Wood, Birmingham.

He stabbed Leo in the stomach with a kitchen knife in what police have described as a “completely random and unprovoked” attack.

Leo’s mum Rachel Fisher read a victim impact statement to her son’s killer, saying: “Leo was truly the most kind, caring and funny little boy. You have taken my nine-year-old daughter’s best friend.

“Leo went to school and never came back. Can you imagine what that does to a little girl? Losing my beautiful boy the way I did will haunt me forever.”