Horror attackers who killed student jailed

Two men, including one from the Black Country, who killed a student in a scene reminiscent of a horror film have been jailed for life.

Reaben Kareem, aged 21 and from Walsall, and his 21-year-old accomplice Jwanru Osman subjected Tony Ho to a horrific six-hour attack before leaving him for dead.

Judge James Stewart QC sentenced Kareem and Osman to minimum terms of 30 years and 25 years respectively for the crime at Bradford Crown Court.

They will also serve concurrent 10-year sentences for wounding both Mr Ho's sister, Sally, and another student Gavin Stolarczyk, on the same day. The attacks took place at Mr Ho's student accommodation in Bradford, on January 22 last year.

The two men have been behind bars since they separately handed themselves in to police shortly after their crimes and their convictions follow a retrial after the original trial last summer had to be abandoned when Judge Stewart was taken ill.

Miss Ho, a pharmacy student, and Mr Stolarczyk, studying law, told the court how the pair tricked their way into their house armed with a knife and a wheel brace.

Miss Ho was lured into the cellar sitting room where Kareem smashed a bottle on her head. Osman covered her mouth to muffle her screams and both men bundled her into a dark boiler room where she was bound and gagged.

Kareem then knifed Mr Stolarczyk in the side before he too was bound with electrical cable and gagged with tape. Mr Ho, 19, was then stabbed in the hallway, forced into Miss Ho's bedroom and tortured to reveal his bank account details.

His sister found his body on her blood-soaked bed after the robbers fled six hours later, carrying their spoils in suitcases.

Mr Ho, from Hong Kong, had been stabbed 13 times and his throat was cut. A wire was wrapped round his neck.

The court heard compulsive gambler Kareem, recruited his friend Osman for the armed robbery at the house because he was desperate to pay back money he had taken from his father.

But Judge Stewart said Kareem had also been motivated by his own girlfriend's perceived grievances against Miss Ho and her boyfriend as a result of sharing the house with them.

He said: "You thought you could kill two birds with one stone." Following the verdict Kareem, of Webster Road, Coalpool, sat with his head in his hands while Osman, of Northolt, Middlesex, stared straight ahead.