How an argument over a park bench led to two 12-year-old boys stabbing a man to death with a machete

Shawn Seesahai, 19, had traveled to the United Kingdom from Anguilla for eye surgery when he was killed, authorities said.

In Britain, two 13-year-old boys were sentenced to at least eight and a half years in a juvenile offenders’ institution for the murder of a stranger whom 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 found guilty of murdering Shawn Seesahai, 19, from Anguilla, according to a statement from the United Kingdom’s Crown Prosecution Service.

They would be the youngest defendants to be convicted of murder in the UK since two 11-year-olds, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, were found guilty of murdering 2-year-old James Bulger in 1993, reports the Associated Press. .

“What you have done is horrific and shocking,” the judge at Nottingham Crown Court told the boys during sentencing, the AP reports. “You didn’t 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 an eye operation and was living in Birmingham at the time of the attack, according to a statement from West Midlands Police.

He had only been in the UK for six months when he was murdered, according to West Midlands Police.

On November 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 a friend were waiting on a bench at the Stowlawn playground, some youths, who were on a nearby basketball court, came over,” the police statement said.

It is unclear what triggered the attack, but shortly after, the two boys “stabbed him with a machete in the 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 CPS.

Officers from West Midlands Police arrived at the scene and began CPR before paramedics took over, the police statement said. “But despite their best efforts, Shawn was pronounced dead at 9:11 p.m.

“They killed my son like they kill a dog,” his father Suresh told the BBC. “It’s brutal. They stabbed him through and through. They kicked him. They handcuffed him. He was helpless.”

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The defendants were arrested after police found them 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 found guilty following a 20-day trial, according to the CPS statement.

One defendant had previously admitted possessing a sharp 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 had stabbed Seesahai, the judge sentenced them both equally, the AP reports.

During sentencing, Seesahai’s father said: “Losing a child is a parent’s worst nightmare. It left a huge hole in the pit of our stomach that nothing could fill. We are devastated as a family, totally heartbroken and confused,” West Midlands Police said.

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