Khayri Mclean died after he was stabbed near North Huddersfield Trust School in September 2022
Chris Baynes & Alex Moss
BBC News
Two teenage cousins who stabbed a 15-year-old boy to death as he walked home from school in West Yorkshire have been jailed for life.
Jovani Harriott, 17, and Jakele Pusey, 15, murdered Khayri McLean after ambushing him outside North Huddersfield Trust School last year.
Khayri’s mother pleaded for an end to violence as her son’s killers were sentenced at Leeds Crown Court.
Harriott must service at least 18 years and Pusey a minimum of 16.
Khayri’s family and friends, who wore T-shirts emblazoned with his picture in court, clapped as a judge lifted an order which had banned the reporting of his killers’ identities.
Image source, West Yorkshire Police
Jovani Harriott, left, and Jakele Pusey saw Khayri Mclean as their enemy, a court heard
In a statement read out in court, his mother Charlie Mclean described how she rushed to the scene after she heard her son had been injured and watched “helplessly” as paramedics fought to save her son’s life.
She said she had been “living a nightmare” since her son’s death, adding: “No parent should have to contemplate this, let alone witness it.
“This violence has to stop, carrying weapons has to stop.”
The judge, Mrs Justice Farbey, said the cousins had seen Khayri as their “enemy” and may have killed him in “revenge” for sharing a video online about a broken window at Harriott’s mother’s house.
Det Supt Marc Bowes, of West Yorkshire Police, said it “will be hard for many of us to comprehend” how a “low-level dispute” ended with two boys “stabbing a fellow student to death at the end of an otherwise ordinary school day”.
Prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford KC said Khayri was killed in a “well-planned” attack on 21 September.
Dressed in black and wearing balaclavas, the defendants waited in an alleyway before ambushing him as he walked along Woodhouse Hill with friends after school.
Pusey shouted Khayri’s name while “jumping into the air” and stabbing him in the heart with a 30cm blade, the court heard. His cousin, who was 16 at the time of the attack, then knifed Khayri in the leg.
Khayri was pulled to his feet by his friends and tried to run away but collapsed. He died later in hospital.
Image source, PA Media
Khayri’s mother, Charlie Mclean, and other relatives and friends wore T-shirts showing his picture
Harriott, who was 16 at the time of the attack, was convicted of murder in March while Pusey pleaded guilty to murder at an earlier hearing.
Mr Sandiford told the court Pusey had admitted murdering Khayri in a recording covertly obtained while he was in detention.
During the conversation, the boy said he felt “no remorse” and claimed to have “slept better” since the killing, the prosecutor said.
His lawyer Richard Wright KC, in mitigation, said Pusey – who was in a gang called the Fartown Boys – had been exploited and “drawn into a life” in which “he felt he belonged, was protected and accepted”.
The court heard the boy had told probation officers he was shot by masked men in a “gang incident” when he was 12 and had dealt drugs since he was 13.
A pre-sentence report concluded violence was “the norm” for him and “the life he lived”, Mr Wright said.
Image source, PA Media
Khayri Mclean was killed in an apparent revenge attack, Leeds Crown Court heard
Mohammed Nawaz KC, in mitigation for Harriott, said his client had shown “genuine and real remorse” for Khayri’s death.
Sentencing the pair, Mrs Justice Farbey said: “Because of what you did Khayri has lost many years of his life and his family has lost a son and brother.”
She said Harriott, despite not inflicting the fatal wound, played “full and equal role in planning the attack” and would be jailed for longer because he did not plead guilty.
‘Nobody has won’
Khayri’s mother described her son as a “loving and caring” boy who loved Manchester United and rugby, was happy in a relationship and had plans to study engineering as he looked forward to a “bright future”.
She added: “All that was taken away by the two boys who attacked him so brutally.
“I ask myself what has this achieved? What has my son died for? Nobody has won in this situation. I’ve lost a child and other parents have lost two sons who have committed this offence.”
Det Supt Bowes, who led the police investigation into Khayri’s murder, said the “appalling attack” had “rightly shocked people across the country” and “highlighted the dreadful consequences of knife crime and the culture of carrying such weapons”.
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