A mother has called for an end to teenage knife violence after two boys who murdered her 15-year-old son on his way home from school were given life sentences.
Khayri Mclean was murdered as he walked with friends in Huddersfield at 2.50pm on 21 September last year. Cousins Jakele Pusey, 15, and Jovani Harriott, 17, had changed into black clothes and black balaclavas and were hiding, waiting to ambush him.
Leeds crown court was played CCTV footage of them leaping out and stabbing Khayri before running away.
Khayri was helped to his feet by his friends and started making his way back to school, but collapsed. Classes had ended and children were “teeming out” as he lay bleeding on the pavement, the court heard.
He was helped by a passing doctor and paramedics and was taken to hospital in Leeds, but died two and a half hours later.
Sentencing the boys, Mrs Justice Farbey said she was not clear what the motivation was, but it may have been gang-related. The prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford KC suggested the motive was revenge.
In a pre-sentence report, Jovani refers to a friend of Khayri’s breaking a window at his mother’s house. Sandiford said: “The reason for targeting Khayri was that he had shared a video of that incident on social media.”
Jakele, who struck the fatal blow to Khayri’s chest, admitted murder. He was sentenced to a minimum of 16 years. Jovani, who stabbed Khayri in the leg, had denied murder, but was found guilty by a jury. He was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years.
The court was read a victim impact statement from Charlie Mclean, Khayri’s mother, who described her son as a Manchester United fan who enjoyed playing rugby league. He wanted to be an engineer when he was older, she said.
Khayri had been helpless when he was attacked, she said. “The fear he went through when he realised he’d been stabbed and was bleeding to death will stay with me for ever.
“I never got to say goodbye. I am living a nightmare. I can hardly function and I have changed as a person. When I wake up, on the occasions I’ve managed to sleep, it hits me like a tonne of bricks again and again. I am in tears on a daily basis.”
She said she asks herself what has been achieved by her son’s death. “What has my son died for? Nobody has won in this situation. I have lost a child and other parents have lost two sons.
“This violence has to stop, carrying weapons has to stop. I’ve lost my son. I would not wish this upon anyone else.”
Jovani has denied being part of a gang, or that the murder of Khayri was gang-related. “However, the crown submits those contentions are at odds both with the very nature of the offence and the circumstances in which it was committed,” said Sandiford.
He said the attack was premeditated and carefully planned, and involved the use of another schoolboy as a “spotter”.
The court heard Jakele was shot by masked men in a gang incident when he was 12. He has flashbacks and nightmares and lost two years of schooling. His family had recently been evicted and he was living in a hotel.
Jakele admitted to probation officers that he had a history of gang-related criminality. A report concluded that “violence against opposing gang members was the norm … the life he lived”.
The defence counsel Mohammed Nawaz KC said his client Jovani was proving to be a model student in detention. He had has shown “genuine and real remorse for this event”.
Family and friends of Khayri sat in the jury box for the sentencing hearing on Thursday wearing matching T-shirts featuring his photo.
The defendants have previously not been named because of their age. An application for anonymity orders to be lifted was granted following submissions from the Press Association and the BBC.
The judge said the principles of open justice outweighed welfare arguments for the two defendants, both from Huddersfield. “Khayri was murdered, aged 15, in a public street near a school at the end of the school day when schoolchildren came teeming out. There is a strong public interest in the full reporting of a murder so close to a school.”
Det Supt Marc Bowes, of West Yorkshire police, who led the investigation, said it was a crime that had shocked people across the UK.
“It will be hard for many of us to comprehend how what appears to have been a relatively low-level dispute has resulted in these males stabbing a fellow student to death at the end of an otherwise ordinary school day.”
