Man jailed 19 years for 'inexplicable' murder

A MAN who fatally stabbed a 17-year-old outside a suburban Melbourne service station has been sentenced to 19 years in jail with a minimum of 15 for his ''inexplicable'' and ''unforgivable'' actions.

A Supreme Court jury convicted Jie Zhu, 25, of murdering Yan Zhuang Yu on November 29, 2007, after he was stabbed in the neck outside the 7-Eleven service station on Whitehorse Road, Box Hill.

Jie Zhu, formerly of Doncaster, stabbed him with such force that it broke through his victim's collarbone and went through his heart. Jie Zhu fled the scene and gave an emergency call operator a false account of what had happened. He hid at a friend's house until his arrest.

''I look at these circumstances and shake my head in horror at how actions encompassing such a brief period of time can cause such life-changing consequences,'' Justice Betty King said. ''This community is entirely sick of random violence, unexplained wanton destruction of young lives by the use of a knife … This is a tragedy of monumental proportions for every single person involved in it.''