The youngest knife murderers in the UK, who were 12 years old when they attacked an “utterly defenceless” man with a machete in a park, have been sentenced to life with minimum terms of eight years and six months.
Shawn Seesahai, 19, was killed by the two boys during a confrontation over a park bench in Wolverhampton on 13 November last year.
The boys, now 13, are believed to be the youngest defendants convicted of murder in Britain since Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both 11, were found guilty in 1993 of killing two-year-old James Bulger.
Mrs Justice Tipples, who previously ruled the youths could not be identified due to concerns over their welfare, told the two boys: “When you killed Shawn he was 19, starting out on his adult life with everything to live for.” She said the family’s lives had been changed forever, adding: “What you both did was horrific and shocking.”
The trial heard the two boys had been wandering the streets near their homes in Wolverhampton with a machete that one of them had bought from a “friend of a friend” a month before.
The court heard that this boy regularly carried a weapon, with his defence lawyer telling the judge he had been “groomed, exploited and trafficked by older youths and young men in the wider community who encouraged him towards the possession of knives”.
The pair got into a confrontation with Seesahai and his friend over a bench, with one boy telling the 19-year-old to “keep stepping”, before the weapon was produced and both men fled.
Seesahai stumbled and fell to the ground where he was set upon by the boys, one using “fists and feet”, while the other stabbed him.
There were conflicting witness accounts during the trial about which boy had inflicted the fatal blows using the machete, and both defendants blamed the other.
The prosecutor, Michelle Heeley KC, said the youths “were engaged in a joint attack upon a man who had done nothing wrong, a man with no weapon, who was utterly defenceless on the ground”.
Seesahai suffered injuries to his back, legs and skull, including a fatal stab wound that went 23cm into his body through his right lung and heart. He had travelled from his home country of Anguilla in the Caribbean to the UK for cataract surgery, and hoped to stay to continue his education.
His family said his death had left them “totally heartbroken and confused”. “The impact on us as a family is devastating. It’s hard to believe that we will ever come to terms with what has happened,” they said in a statement read to the court. “None of us have had an unbroken night’s sleep since Shawn was taken from us. Every time I close my eyes, all I can think about are what his last moments were and how scared he must have been.”
The judge previously rejected a media application to name the boys after their conviction, ruling that protecting their welfare outweighed the public interest in the case.
The boys were allowed to leave the dock and sit in the back row of the court benches as the judge, Mrs Justice Tipples, began her sentencing.
”You did not know Shawn, he was a stranger to you,” she told them. “You both killed Shawn in an attack that lasted less than a minute when he asked you to move. I am sure you intended to kill him.”
After the boys were taken down to begin their sentences in youth detention, Tipples explained her reasons for the length of their minimum terms, saying the murder was aggravated by the fact it was an attack involving two offenders.
Speaking after the sentencing, the senior prosecutor Jonathan Roe said: “Shawn’s family have shown remarkable strength and dignity in the aftermath of such a tragedy and our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.”
