Man jailed for 27 years after stabbing stranger in the head in case of mistaken identity

A 23-year-old has been sentenced to 27 years in prison for stabbing a man he had never met in the head, leaving the victim with permanent brain damage after mistakenly believing him to be a rival gang member.
Richard Sivanda, of Highgate Hill, was found guilty of attempted murder at Snaresbrook Crown Court in January and sentenced on Friday. The attack left his victim, a 20-year-old man, requiring life-saving hospital treatment and eventually forced into an assisted living facility.
What happened on Highgate Hill
The victim and his girlfriend were walking towards Highgate Tube station on the evening of 15 February 2025 when Sivanda approached them and demanded to know where the man was from. Sivanda believed him to be a member of a rival gang responsible for a murder in 2021 — a claim for which, according to detectives, there was no evidence. The two had never met.
The couple walked away, but Sivanda gave chase and confronted the victim a second time, attacking him with a pointed weapon before fleeing. The injured man was left in a critical condition but managed to reach hospital, where he received emergency treatment. Police were called at 10.28pm after he was admitted with stab wounds to the head.
Despite surviving, the victim sustained lasting brain damage.
How detectives built the case
Officers identified Sivanda through CCTV footage that placed him in the area before and after the assault. Further footage tracked him returning to his home address, where he was arrested just 29 hours later.
Investigators also recovered a video in which Sivanda, using a filter to obscure his face, claimed he believed he had killed the victim and boasted about the severity of the attack. Detective Chief Inspector Gemma Alger, who led the inquiry, described his conduct as “particularly brazen”, noting that he had gone “as far as to brag on social media of the attack and the lasting damage he caused”.
DCI Alger said the victim had been targeted through mistaken identity and that the case demonstrated how gang violence could affect people with no connection to it. “Our thoughts are with the victim of this heinous attack,” she said.
A wider push against knife crime
The Metropolitan Police said the conviction formed part of its ongoing campaign against knife crime in the capital. Nearly 3,000 knives were seized from London’s streets last year, according to the force, and the number of people hospitalised after stabbings has fallen by 29 per cent over the past five years.
“This represents promising progress,” DCI Alger said, “but we remain focused on driving down serious violence across London.“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​