Harvey Willgoose murder: Teenager who killed schoolboy, 15, is sentenced to life in prison after guilty verdict
The teenager who murdered a 15-year-old schoolboy has been sentenced to life in prison - and can be named by the media for the first time.
Mohammed Umar Khan, 15, has been detained at Sheffield Crown Court for life with a minimum term of 16 years for the murder of teenager Harvey Willgoose at their school.
Willgoose, also 15, was stabbed in the heart by Mohammed Umar Khan, who took a hunting knife to school and attacked the teenager in front of horrified children.
Sheffield Crown Court heard how other pupils fled “in fear and panic”, some locking themselves in a school cupboard, after the fatal attack at All Saints Catholic High School in Sheffield on February 3.
Harvey’s older sister, Sophie Willgoose, read a victim impact statement to the court at the defendant’s sentencing hearing, in which she said the killer “didn’t just end Harvey’s life, he ended ours too”.
Khan was found guilty of murder in August and was sentenced by the trial judge, Mrs Justice Ellenbogen. Earlier today (October 22), the judge agreed to lift an order banning his identification following applications from a number of media organisations.
She told the court she had to balance the need to fully report a very serious case with the welfare of the defendant, who turns 16 next month.
The judge said: “This was a serious crime carried out by one pupil on another on school property with a knife he brought into school. It was witnessed to varying degrees by other pupils and teachers.
“The public will wish to know the identity of those who commit such offences in seeking to understand how it is a child of that age can do so.”
The court was shown images and video found on the defendant’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 defendant “snapped” after years of bullying and “an intense period of fear at school”.
Since Willgoose’s death, his family have campaigned against knife crime, with a particular focus on getting knife-arches into schools.