A 15-year-old boy who stabbed a fellow pupil to death during their school lunch break can now be named as he faces a life sentence today.
Harvey Willgoose, 15, was stabbed in the heart in front of horrified children by by Mohammed ‘Umar’ Khan, who had taken a hunting knife to school on February 3.
Other children fled ‘in fear and panic’ after the attack at All Saints Catholic High School in Sheffield, with some locking themselves in a school cupboard.
Khan was found guilty of murder in August and is being sentenced by judge Mrs Justice Ellenbogen today.
Ahead of passing sentence, the senior judge lifted the automatic reporting restriction that had been in place.
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It barred publication of Khan’s identity during the trial and would have otherwise remained until he is 18.
Jurors in the trial were shown CCTV footage of the moment Harvey was stabbed twice.
One of the blows cut through a rib and pierced his heart.
Immediately after the stabbing Khan told All Saints’ headteacher Sean Pender: ‘I’m not right in the head. My mum doesn’t look after me right.’
The school’s assistant head, Morgan Davis, took the knife off Khan and heard him say ‘you know I can’t control it’, which the teacher took to be a reference to his anger issues, given previous incidents of violent behaviour at school.
Harvey and Khan fell out following an incident in the school five days before the fatal stabbing, on January 29.
On that day, Khan tried to intervene in an altercation involving two other boys and had to be restrained by a teacher.
When he claimed one of these boys had a knife, a lockdown was declared and police were called, although no weapon was found.
Harvey was not at school that day and stayed off for the rest of the week, texting his dad: ‘Am not going in that school while people have knives.’
Over the weekend before the stabbing on Monday morning, Harvey and Khan fell out on social media, with each siding with a different boy involved in the lockdown incident.
When the teenager returned to school on Monday February 3, he was asked by Mr Davis whether he had anything he should not and said he did not.
The jury has heard about a series of encounters between Harvey and the defendant that morning before the defendant pulled out the knife and used it just after the start of the lunch break, which began at 12.10pm.
The court was shown images and video found on Khan’s phone which captured him posing with knives and other weapons, and was told how he had used search terms relating to weapons on the internet.
Khan told the court how he decided to carry a knife for protection as he feared other teenagers whom he believed were carrying weapons.
His barrister Gul Nawaz Hussain KC told the jury the teen ‘snapped’ after years of bullying and ‘an intense period of fear at school’.
Since Harvey’s death, his family have campaigned against knife crime, with a particular focus on getting knife-arches into schools.
After the defendant was convicted, Harvey’s sister Sophie Willgoose said outside court: ‘Harvey was full of life, warm, funny and caring with a unique ability to bring people together.
‘He was deeply loved by his family, cherished by his friends, and respected by all who knew him.’
She went on to say: ‘This tragedy has not only devastated our family, but has rippled across the country. People everywhere continue to grieve the loss of our beautiful boy.’
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