‘Shocking’: the 12-year-olds who killed Shawn Seesahai in a quiet park | Wolverhampton

Ssurrounded by quiet residential streets and primary school grounds, Wolverhampton’s Stowlawn pitches are usually a place where teenagers kick a football around and children pass by on their way home from school.

When Sean Sisahai came across two 12-year-old boys hanging out in the park with a friend, he would not have expected one of them to be carrying a deadly weapon, or that minutes later they would use that weapon to kill him in a brutal, random attack.

Exactly what happened between Seesahai first coming into contact with the boys and them stabbing him with a machete was hotly disputed during the trial. Prosecutors said Seesahai, 19, “did not suggest violence or do anything to offend” the two boys before he was killed. He was a stranger to them, he accidentally ran into them and became a victim of their obsession with the weapon with which they had posed for pictures hours earlier.

Derren Harrigan, Sisahai’s friend who was with him the night of the murder, said they were threatened by the boys as they sat on a bench discussing their plans for Christmas.

He said one of the boys “shouldered” Seesahai before reaching for the blade and shouting “run bro”. “The dude took it out of the sheath,” he told the court. “We took off running but Sean tripped. I was running for my life – I couldn’t stand there and watch.”

Giving evidence in court, the two boys claimed that Seesahai asked them to move from the bench. One said he was hit by Seesahai and his friend used the weapon to threaten him.

Rachel Brand KC, representing the youth, who admitted possessing the machete, suggested the incident was “provoked” after the defendants were aggressively asked to move. She said it may have been a “sudden and unexpected fatal stabbing” by a boy who “panicked or lost his head”.

Regardless of the exact sequence of events leading up to the stabbing, the fact that two boys so young were responsible for the violence shocked those involved in the case. “In my career I have never come across children as young as 12 carrying and using a machete in the manner described in court,” said DI Damian Forrest of West Midlands Police, senior investigating officer on the case.

“I’ve been a police officer for 20 years and it’s not the first time I’ve come across a young man who’s lost his life in a really brutal way, but then to find out two 12-year-olds were responsible, it was shocking and it made us all from investigation team to stop and think about things.’

During the trial, both boys wore shirts and ties as they sat flanked by mediators who helped explain court procedures to them — while they used assistive devices to calm their nerves.

It was a stark reminder of how young they are and how dangerous weapons are falling into younger and younger hands. The youth, who was in possession of a machete with a 42.5cm black blade, refused to name the person he bought it from for £40. He was reportedly obsessed with knives and nonchalant about the stabbing, telling friends in one message: “It is what it is.”

He wore it hidden in his leg and sent pictures of himself in disguise and kept it on friends because he “thought it was cool”, he told the court.

Neither boy had any previous convictions, cautions or reprimands. After a chance meeting in a park in Wolverhampton, they became the youngest convicted murderers in the UK since John Venables and Robert Thompson were found guilty of murdering James Bulger in 1993.