Standard
December 22, 2014
A teenager who stabbed a man 11 times in a horrific axe and knife attack reminiscent of the Hollywood movie The Shining was sentenced to a minimum of 17 years at the Old Bailey today.
Handyman Paul Thrower died after two youths hacked at him with a 4ft long axe and stabbed him at flats in Hayes, Middlesex in February.
Zakariya Subeir and Kiro Halliburton, both now 18, hit out when Mr Thrower came at them in a rage, smashing through a reinforced glass partition they were hiding behind.
Halliburton, who delivered the fatal knife wound, was found guilty of murder while Subeir, who hit the victim twice with an axe, and Mahdi Osman, also 18, were convicted of manslaughter.
Sentencing Judge John Bevan QC said Mr Thrower had been the victim of “10 seconds of extreme violence.”
He said Halliburton, who was only 17 at the time, could have had a far longer sentence had he been born a month later making him 18 and in a higher sentencing bracket.
Imposing a sentence of detention at Her Majesty’s pleasure, the juvenile equivalent of a life term, the judge told him: “You can consider yourself fortunate.
“The carrying of a knife has become endemic among some teenagers in part s of London and it’s assumed to add power and respect to the carrier but that’s a delusion.
“It is the resort of a coward. You are a dangerous young man, repeatedly aggressive when armed with a knife.”
Subeir was sentenced to eight years in a young offenders’ institute with an extended licence period of four years. Osman received five and a half years.
The court heard how the victim had been drinking and became very angry when his girlfriend Geraldine Roberts told him the youths swore, spat and threw a drink at her earlier that day.
When Mr Thrower confronted them, Subeir and Halliburton shut themselves into a bin chute on a first-floor communal balcony at St Dunstan’s Close.