Shawn Seesahai: 'Humble and hardworking' teen who came to UK for eye treatment and was murdered by machete-wielding schoolboys
A "humble and hardworking" teenager who came to the UK with his family to get treatment for his cataracts was murdered in the Black Country by two schoolboys with a machete just months after arriving.
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Shawn Seesahai, from Anguilla in the Caribbean, was just 19 when he was fatally attacked on a playing field in Bilston. His two killers, who told a court they played video games in the hours after the killing, were even younger still.
The two boys, who this summer became the youngest convicted murderers in Britain since James Bulger's killers, are now 13 years old and were just 12 when they set upon Mr Seesahai in November last year. A court heard that one of the defendants posed, wearing a mask, with the murder weapon for a picture hours before the killing, and that they attacked Mr Seesahai without provocation.
A month-long trial at Nottingham Crown Court earlier this year heard Mr Seesahai was shoulder-barged by the smaller of the two boys, who often carried a machete, before they punched, stamped and "chopped" at him with the 42.5cm-long blade.
His injuries included a 23cm-deep cut piercing his ribs into his heart and slash wounds on his leg. The court heard he had been hit so hard to the skull with the machete part of the bone had come away.
The victim’s friend told the trial he was forced to run for his life but Mr Seesahai stumbled as he tried to flee from the boys.
Although the friend did not see the “vicious attack” that ensued, prosecutor Michelle Heeley KC said a teenage girl who had been with the 12-year-olds told police that both had been in possession of the machete.
The witness described seeing one boy pick up the machete and hold it in the air, Mr Seesahai falling to the floor and then being punched and kicked.
He was pronounced dead at 9.11pm after police and paramedics arrived on the scene.
The two boys were arrested on November 14, the day after murdering Mr Seesahai, and have spent more than 300 days in custody awaiting first trial and now sentence.
