Two 13-year-old boys in Britain were sentenced to at least eight and a half years in a juvenile offender institution for the murder of a stranger they “randomly attacked with a machete” and stabbed to death in Wolverhampton last year, authorities said.
In June, the two boys, who cannot be named because they are minors, were convicted of murdering Shawn Seesahai, 19, of Anguilla, according to a statement from the U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service.
They are believed to be the youngest defendants ever to be convicted of murder in the U.K. since two 11-year-olds, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, were found guilty of killing 2-year-old James Bulger in 1993, the Associated Press reports.
“What you did is horrific and shocking,” the Nottingham Crown Court judge told the boys when handing down the sentence, the AP reports. “You did not know Shawn, he was a stranger to you. You both killed Shawn in an attack that lasted less than a minute when he asked you to move.”
Seesahai had traveled to the UK for eye surgery and was staying in Birmingham at the time of the attack, according to a statement from West Midlands Police.
He had only been in the U.K. for six months when he was murdered, according to West Midlands Police.
On Nov. 13, 2023, the night Seesahai was killed, he and two of his friends took a tram to Wolverhampton so one of the friends could visit his girlfriend, West Midlands Police said in the statement.
“While Seesahai and one friend waited on a bench in Stowlawn playing fields, some youngsters, who had been on a nearby basketball court, came over,” the police statement said.
It is unclear exactly what prompted the attack, but shortly after, the two boys “stabbed him with a machete to his back, legs and skull and he suffered traumatic injuries and was left dying at the scene as the two boys ran away, taking the murder weapon with them,” according to the CPS.
West Midlands Police officers arrived at the scene and started CPR before paramedics took over, the police statement said. “But despite all their best efforts, Shawn was declared dead at 9:11 pm.
“They killed my son like they kill a dog,” his father Suresh told the BBC. “It’s brutal. They stab him through and through. They kick him. They cuff him. He was helpless.”
The defendants were arrested after police tracked them down and searched their homes, the CPS said in its statement.
The murder weapon was found under the bed of one of the defendants, according to the CPS.
At their trial in June, both defendants denied murder but were convicted following a 20-day-trial, the CPS statement said.
One defendant had previously admitted possessing a bladed article on April 8, 2024, and the second defendant was also convicted of the same charge after the trial, according to the CPS.
Since it was unclear which boy stabbed Seesahai, the judged sentenced them both equally, the AP reports.
During the sentencing, Seesahai’s father said, “Losing a child is a parent’s worst nightmare. It has left a huge hole in the pit of our stomach which nothing can fill, we are devastated as a family, totally heart broken and confused,” according to West Midlands Police.
