A pair of 12-year-old British boys have been convicted of murder in the fatal machete slashing of a teenage stranger – making them the youngest killers found guilty in the UK in over three decades.
The baby-faced killers, whose names have not been released, slashed 19-year-old Shawn Seesahai to death in November in a shocking unprovoked attack in Wolverhampton, the BBC reported.
The boys tried to blame each other for the brutal murder during the trial, but a jury on Monday found both of the violent youngsters guilty, the outlet reported.
Prosecutor Michelle Heeley told the panel during the trial that Seesahai was beaten and slashed in the back, legs and skull – which the attackers hit so hard that a piece of bone “had actually come away.”
“He had slash wounds on his leg and most significantly he had an injury from the machete that went through his body all the way from his back, through his ribs and into his heart,” Heeley said.
An eyewitness to the heinous slaying told police one of the boys was slashing Seesahai’s legs while the other was stomping on his head during the Nov. 13 assault.
Seesahai was pronounced dead at the scene.
West Midlands Police Detective Inspector Damian Forrest called the attack “shocking.”
“Sadly, this is not the first case that I have investigated of a young man losing his life to knife crime, but it is the first that I have looked at two 12-year-olds being responsible,” Forrest told the BBC.
“That is something that took me by surprise and will stay with me.”
The boys are believed to be the youngest killer convicts in Britain since two 10-year-old boys were found guilty in the 1993 torture and death of toddler James Bulger, the outlet said.
Bulger was just 2-years old when Jon Venables and Robert Thompson kidnapped the boy and brutally beat him – with the abduction at a shopping center captured on now-viral surveillance images.