Laa Chol's killer jailed for 20 years

Laa Chol was stabbed to death outside a Melbourne high-rise apartment. Photo / Instagram

Screams and thuds were heard inside a Melbourne courtroom as a teenager was jailed for 20 years over a crime that shocked the city last year.

Commotion broke out inside the Supreme Court room on Friday morning as an 18-year-old man, who cannot be named because of his age at the time of the crime, was jailed for the murder of university student Laa Chol.

Ms Chol was stabbed in the chest during a scuffle outside a rental apartment inside a highrise building in the Melbourne CBD.

Her killer will not be eligible for parole until he has served at least 15 years behind bars.

As the sentence was handed down, a woman was walked out of the courtroom with her hands behind her back.

Ms Chol's killer, who was 17 when gatecrashed a party at the EQ apartment tower, was kicked out with a number of others after Ms Chol noticed her mobile phone was missing.

A fight broke out and Ms Chol was stabbed through the heart.

"Your senseless and vicious crime has deprived her of the most basic right, the right to life," Supreme Court Justice Stephen Kaye told the teenager today.

"Your actions were utterly cowardly and callous."

Outside court, Ms Chol's father Daniel pointed to a picture of his daughter on the front of a T-shirt he wore to her killer's sentencing.

"This is my daughter, I lost her," he told reporters. "By a hunter. He wins. He come long distance with a knife. A knife in this country is not allowed.

"You go to a party with a knife ... all I can say is I'm not happy ... no resolution.

"My daughter (could have) helped this country if she'd been alive. She was a good girl."

The teen's lawyers attempted to argue he did not intend serious harm when he stabbed Ms Chol, news.com.au reports.

But a jury did not believe his claims and in September convicted him of murder.

After she was stabbed, Ms Chol stumbled back into the apartment and collapsing. Her friends initially thought she was having an asthma attack, but Ms Chol's heart had been pierced by the knife.

She was dead by the time paramedics arrived and the knife has never been found.

A court last year heard police had more than "50 hours of CCTV", "a large number of witnesses" and "phone records" to go through.

Ms Chol's death prompted a back-of-forth between politicans about gang violence in Melbourne.

But Victoria Police Commander Stuart Bateson said at the time of Ms Chol's death that it had nothing to do with Sudanese gang violence.

"When we start to make an issue that is bigger than what it is and when we start to racialise and we start to target this specific community, that leads to some unintended consequences," he said.

"That means a whole community feels vilified. They often feel frightened to go out in public in groups, they're shouted out."

Premier Daniel Andrews told ABC radio Ms Chol's family "deserve fundamentally better than what they've been given over these past 12 or 24 hours", referring to the politics that surrounded her murder.

"I don't think her family would be getting very much comfort from this sort of discussion," he said of debates linking the death to gang violence."