Two 12-year-old schoolboys who callously stabbed a man to death in a park with machetes before laughing about it on snapchat will not be named by the courts as a judge feared they may be ‘bullied.’
The evil children became the UK’s youngest knife murderers after stabbing Shawn Seesahai, 19, through the heart in a park in Wolverhampton in November last year.
The youths are also believed to be the youngest defendants convicted of murder in Britain since Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both aged 11, were found guilty in 1993 of killing two-year-old James Bulger.
However, despite four media organisations, including the PA news agency, having argued that the defendants, one now aged 13, should lose anonymity granted by an order under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act, it was kept.
Mrs Justice Tipples, sitting at Nottingham Crown Court, said she had accepted evidence contained in pre-sentence reports that naming the boys would have a detrimental impact on their welfare.
This 12-year-old killer, seen posing with a huge machete tucked into his trousers on the day he hacked teenager Shawn Seesahai to death, cannot be named by the media
Together with a 12-year-old accomplice he hacked Mr Seesahai (pictured) to death
Surmising, she claimed that naming the two 12-year-old murderers did not outweigh the public interest as to do so for the first boy could expose him to ‘bullying.’
She also stated that should the name of the second boy come to light it would be ‘detrimental’ to his mother’s ‘fragile’ mental health.
The family of Mr Seesahai also supported the bid to remove the anonymity order on the killers.
The ability of the media to name youth offenders convicted or suspected of serious crimes has been thrown into sharp focus this week following the incident in Southport.
On Thursday, the teenager charged with murdering three children and harming 10 others at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on Monday was named as Axel Rudakubana.
The 17-year-old, who turns 18 in just six days time, is accused of carrying out the attack that killed Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine.
The teenager’s identity could not be revealed because suspects under 18 receive automatic anonymity in all UK court cases, except for in exceptional circumstances.
But after a successful application to the judge by the Mail, Rudakubana’s name can now be reported.
Judge Andrew Menary KC said he had to balance the risk to the suspect’s family and the risk to him in custody with the public interest accurately reporting his identity.
Pictured for the first time: Southport stabbing suspect Axel Rudakubana, now 17, pictured as a child, is charged with murdering three little girls and harming 10 others
Alice Dasilva Aguiar, aged nine, was one of three children killed by a knifeman at a Taylor-Swift themed dance class in Southport
Elsie Dot Stancombe, aged seven, was also fatally wounded in the attack which shocked the nation on Monday
Bebe King, aged six, was also killed in the attack. A teenager is set to appear in court charged with three counts of murder
In proceedings in Wolverhampton, the judge told the court the facts of the killing – which ‘took place in not much more than a minute’ – were ‘of course shocking, particularly given the very young age of the defendants’.
As part of her ruling, the judge accepted evidence from social workers that one of the defendants was vulnerable, had ‘extremely complex needs’ and that identifying him would have ‘an extremely detrimental impact on his mental health’.
The judge also accepted a statement in a pre-sentence report which said naming the other youth was likely to increase the likelihood of negative attention within the custodial setting.
Following the judgment, Jude Bunting KC, representing three of the media organisations, said an appeal against the ruling in a higher court was unlikely.
Addressing the court on Monday, Mr Bunting submitted that the murder was within a category identified during a previous case as having a high public interest.
He told the court: ‘This point is squarely present in this case, which has attracted local concern and national revulsion.
‘We are in the realm of knife crime, which is an issue of substantial public interest.’
Naming the boys would also enable the media to investigate the possibility of institutional failures, Mr Bunting asserted.
Defence counsel Rachel Brand KC and Paul Lewis KC both opposed the media application to lift the restriction on identifying the boys.
Ms Brand said the welfare of the boy who is still 12 – who bleached and hid the machete after Mr Seesahai’s murder – should be given a ‘heavier consideration’ than public interest factors.
Mr Lewis, representing the boy who has turned 13 since his conviction, urged the court to focus on the facts of Mr Seesahai’s killing rather than ‘siren calls’ relating to abstract principles from previous cases.
‘How does naming two 12-year-olds better inform public debate?’ Mr Lewis asked. ‘There is no evidence that to name two 12-year-olds would provide any deterrent.’
After their conviction, social media exchanges came to light involving them and a girl witness who later attended a police station with her mother to make a statement.
The conversation retrieved by police starts when one of the killers says on Snapchat of the stabbing: ‘Everyone’s talking abt (sic) it, literally everyone, everyone knows.’
The other one in the pair who were both found guilty of murder at Nottingham Crown Court yesterday – then responds with a voice note, saying: ‘It is what it is.’
They then shared more messages, saying: ‘I’m scared man’ – before the other says ‘I’m not’, followed by the acronym ‘IDRC’ which means ‘I don’t really care’.
The Snapchat messages the two killers sent to each other after they killed Suresh Seesahai
The other one then responds with a voice note saying: 'I ain't said nowt (sic) cause every time I talk about it, like I act weird apparently so (inaudible) comes and goes.'
There is then a response saying: 'I'm just scared your you too (sic).'
Yesterday, family members of both Mr Seesahai and the defendants cried and hugged each other in the public gallery as the jurors found both boys guilty of murder and one guilty of possessing a bladed article.
They are believed to be youngest defendants convicted of murder in Britain since Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both aged 11, were found guilty in 1993 of killing two-year-old James Bulger.
In an interview released after the verdicts, Mr Seesahai's parents Suresh and Maneshwary have said they will never be able to get over the loss of their son who always told them he would 'shine' and take care of them.
The victim, Suresh Seesahai (pictured), was shoulder-barged by the smaller of the two defendants before being punched, kicked, stamped on and 'chopped' at with the weapon
A month-long trial was told Mr Seesahai was shoulder-barged by the smaller of the two defendants, who 'often' carried a machete with a 42.5cm-long blade.
He was then punched, kicked, stamped on and 'chopped' at with the weapon.
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 on Wolverhampton's Stowlawn playing fields on November 13 last year.
After refusing to answer police questions in the aftermath of the murder, the boys both gave evidence to jurors, blaming each other for inflicting the fatal blow.
As well as failing to summon help for Mr Seesahai, the youths showed no remorse for what they had done in the 24 hours before their arrest - with one cleaning the machete with bleach and hiding it under his bed.
An image retrieved from a phone of one of the boys showing long knives and swords on a bed
CCTV footage revealed the last moments of Shawn Seesahai as he headed to the park
They told the court they both played video games in the hours after the killing, claiming they did not know Mr Seesahai had died until the following day.
Jurors heard one of the defendants posed, wearing a mask, with the murder weapon for a picture hours before the killing, and was found to have 11 areas of bloodstaining on his clothing.
The boy was also seen with blood on his hands in the aftermath of the murder, while his friend had a small area of bloodstaining on his right trainer.
Mr Seesahai, a stranger to the two boys, was pronounced dead at 9.11pm after police and paramedics were called to the scene.
