Shawn Seesahai: Boys, 12, found guilty of Wolverhampton murder

Two 12-year-old boys have been found guilty of murdering a man who was stabbed through the heart with a machete.

Shawn Seesahai, 19, died in November last year after being set upon on Stowlawn playing fields in East Park, Wolverhampton.

The pair, who cannot be named, are believed to be the youngest convicted of the crime since James Bulger’s killers were detained in 1993.

During a trial at Nottingham Crown Court, the boys sought to blame each other, but the jury convicted them both of Mr Seesahai’s murder on Monday.

Jurors heard they attacked their victim with such ferocity that in one blow, the 16-inch (42.5cm) machete almost passed through his body.

One defendant had previously pleaded guilty to possessing a machete “without good reason or lawful authority”, while the co-defendant had denied the same offence, but was also convicted of that charge on Monday.

Mr Seesahai was from Anguilla in the Caribbean, but had travelled to the UK to get help with his eyesight and lived in Handsworth, Birmingham.

The teenager had cataracts that he had been unable to get treatment for in Anguilla, and after successful treatment in the UK, he was able to start planning for the future and think about getting an education, prosecutor Michelle Heeley KC said.

On 13 November, he travelled to Wolverhampton with friends, while the two defendants were together on the same afternoon, meeting two girls about the same age.

The court heard one of the boys regularly carried a machete, and that day had been passing it between him and his co-defendant.

Mr Seesahai and a friend went to the playing fields and sat on a bench before walking around the park and later returning to the bench where they encountered the two defendants and a girl.