Possible failures in handling of 12-year-old schoolboy who killed 19-year-old in park

Visitor Shawn Seesahai, 19, was hanging out at Stowlawn playing fields off Green Park Avenue in Bilston on November 13 last year when he was attacked by two schoolboys.

The youths, one of whom is now 13, are believed to be the youngest defendants convicted of murder in Britain since Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both 11, were found guilty in 1993 of James’s murder Bulger, aged two.

A hearing to lift a ban on naming the defendants, who blamed each other for fatally stabbing him in the back, heard that an adult repeatedly “intercepted” the blades of one of the youths and called for emergency help.

Jude Bunting KC, representing ITN, News Corp and the Associated Press, also told Nottingham Crown Court that there was a “possibility of institutional failures” related to young people in the months leading up to Mr Seesahai’s murder.

He also said despite an assessment by vulnerable children’s charity Barnado’s of the same child last July, “no care was taken to protect him”.

“You can see the local authority’s involvement in his life from an early age,” Mr Bunting said.

He said someone called for help “intercepting machetes and knives from 2021” and that despite that call for help, the defendant “was able to go out and carry out this horrific attack”, he added.