A 27-year-old Nigerian man, Abraham Omotoso, has been sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for the murder of one Mohamed Al-Zufairi in the United Kingdom.
According to Dailymail, Omotosho stabbed the father-of-two in his chest outside a Poundland store while waiting for his young daughter to buy sweets.
Al-Zufairi died in the hospital at 2.30am the next day from the injury.
Omotoso, however, was arrested at Gatwick Airport hours later while he was trying to purchase a one way plane ticket to Nigeria.
The court heard that when he was shown CCTV footage of the incident during his police interview, Omotoso told the police, ‘No, it’s not me’. He later admitted to stabbing the deceased but claimed he acted in self-defence
In a statement, Al-Zufairi brother, Jafar, said, “Mohamed was a family man, his family came first.
“It’s like a massive hole just suddenly appeared in our family, our big brother was there one minute and suddenly he was snatched away.
“I think it has hit his daughter the hardest. She did not see her dad being stabbed but was with him. She walked to the local shops to get some sweets with her dad and returned home without him.
“Our lives will never be the same, they have been scarred.”
Prosecutor Carey Johnston said, “the police investigation was to discover that there was something of a history of ill feeling between the defendant, his brother Emmanuel, who was called ‘Venomous’, and a close friend of theirs, Tre, or ‘Trigger’ on one side, and some members of the Al-Zufairi family on the other.
“Whatever the reason for the ill feeling and whatever shape it took, importantly, there is no evidence to suggest that it involved Mohammed Al-Zufairi himself.
“The attack was not a random attack of a stranger on a stranger.”
In a letter to the judge, Omotosho said he was ‘sorry’ and added: ‘I didn’t mean any of this to happen.’
He was cleared of murder at the first trial but the jury failed to reach a verdict on the manslaughter charge.
He denied manslaughter at the second trial and was convicted.
Sentencing him, Judge Nicholas Cooke QC said, “Sadly the carrying of knives is all too common.
“The streets need to be made safe. It is impossible for the judiciary to do that alone but we must not contribute to the streets being made unsafe.
“Although she was not physically present, the victim had been with his eight-year-old daughter. That is an aggravating factor.’
Detective Inspector Jon Meager from the Metropolitan Police said, “This was a brutal attack in a busy high street which resulted in a young father losing his life.
“While his daughter did not witness the assault, it is something that is undoubtedly going to affect her for life.”
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