Killer who stabbed eight at random in knife rampage sentenced to life
A man who stabbed people at random, killing one and seriously injuring seven others, has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 21 years.
Zephaniah McLeod carried out the series of attacks in the early hours of 6 September last year, as people were enjoying a night out in Birmingham City Centre.
CCTV and dashcam footage captured him walking calmly through the streets, stabbing people, then moving on.
McLeod pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, as well as four charges of attempted murder and three charges of wounding with intent.
He was sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court.
McLeod carried out the series of attacks in the early hours of 6 September 2020
After the first three stabbings, he disposed of his knife down a drain, took a taxi to his home in Selly Oak, four miles away, where he re-armed himself and headed back to the city centre.
It was then that he came across Jacob Billington, 23, from Liverpool, and his friend Michael Callaghan.
They were part of a group of seven friends returning to their hotel after a night out.
McLeod asked the group if they had a lighter before attacking Mr Billington and Mr Callaghan.
Mr Billington was stabbed through the neck. He was rushed to hospital but pronounced dead at 2.57am.
Jacob Billington was killed in the attack
His mother, Jo, had last seen her son as he left to celebrate a friend’s birthday.
“I can still see him leaving the house with the lads in the car outside beeping the horns getting him to hurry up, and he skipped out, and we just thought he was going for a lovely night out with his friends,” she recalled.
She was woken in the early hours by police knocking on the door to tell her that her son had been killed.
“It was absolutely awful. You feel like you had all the breath sucked out of you is the best way to describe it,” she said.
She then had to wake his sisters to tell them.
Abbie and Jo Billington describe the night Jacob was killed
Abbie Billington, 22, remembered the moment she found out her brother was dead.
“There are just no words to describe the sadness that I felt,” she said.
Mr Callaghan had suffered catastrophic injures.
McLeod’s knife had severed his jugular vein and carotid artery. He lost so much blood he had a stroke.
Michael Callaghan pictured before the attack
His mother, Anne Callaghan, was woken by a call from the hospital.
“We were called in the morning about 5.30am by a nurse to say that he was in theatre, and he was stable, and obviously that was terrible to hear.
“We didn’t know what she was talking about, and I said, ‘what’s happened?’ She said, ‘he’s been stabbed’. I couldn’t grasp it at all.”
They travelled to Birmingham and were told that if he survived, he would have life-changing injuries.
It was 10 days before they were confident he would make it.
Michael suffered catastrophic injures in the attack
Before the stabbing, Mr Callaghan and Mr Billington were in a band. They both loved music, and the former enjoyed sport too. But over the last 14 months, he has had to relearn to walk and still can’t use his left hand.
His mother said life is difficult for her son, who is mourning the loss of his best friend.
“Michael is just devastated at the loss of Jacob,” she said. “They were totally on the same wavelength, and you know he misses him every day.”
The court heard McLeod had been suffering with paranoid schizophrenia since 2012 and these were not his first offences.
He had previous convictions for robbery, escaping from lawful custody, possession of a firearm in a public place and possession of class A drugs.
He had spoken to a psychiatrist on the phone on 3 September, days before the attack.
McLeod puts one knife down a drain. Pic: West Midlands Police
“On release from prison in April 2020, we were unable to make contact with him as we were not informed of his whereabouts. I spoke to Zephaniah briefly on the phone whilst he was with his Care Coordinator…” Dr Ezzine Onuba, the psychiatrist, wrote in a statement to the court.
“Zephaniah continues to hear voices which he told me is there all the time and can be distressing.
“It was difficult to do a full assessment. He was due to be seen face to face on 24 September 2020.”
Superintendent Jim Munro from West Midlands Police told Sky News: “He wasn’t under any license conditions and actively being managed, so he’d come back out having served his sentence.”
Mrs Callaghan believes he should never be released.
“All I want is for him to be off the streets because I don’t think he can be ever trusted again,” she said.
“He’s not answered any questions, he’s not talked about it, we don’t know anything about why he did what he did. How can anybody say he’s safe again? I don’t think anybody can.”
McLeod arrested by armed officers. Pic: West Midlands Police
Mr Billington’s mother says she believes mistakes have been made by the authorities and hopes a serious case review under way looking into the agencies that were aware of McLeod will provide answers.
“For me, there’s quite a lot of unanswered questions about what happened on that night,” she said. “And what led up to that night in terms of… this was somebody well known to lots of different agencies in many different sectors, and yet still it appears that he was in a position where he did this.
“The fact that he didn’t appear to have been monitored in the way that you would imagine he would.
“As somebody who was known to be dangerous and had a long previous history of being dangerous, had a known mental health condition, none of which seems to have been taken into account at all in terms of how he was monitored.”
After a difficult few months we have a more positive picture from the Palace.
A personal moment of the King and Queen released with the news he can now return to public duties.
It’s the details he will be delighted to share.
Not only are his medics “encouraged” with his progress, and “positive” about his recovery, they’re also happy he can get back to work.
And for a man who is widely reported to be a workaholic, this will be wholly welcome.
This was not how he’d imagined the first year after his coronation.
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He knows from his late mother’s mantra, a monarch has to be seen to be believed.
But his cancer diagnosis changed everything.
The royal year so meticulously mapped out was put on pause with unprecedented and huge uncertainty.
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The King’s constitutional work has continued, but the public outings were stopped.
His family has stepped up to support him, and protocols were in place should the need arise.
But it has been an incredibly challenging time for the House of Windsor.
News of the Princess of Wales’s cancer diagnosis a double blow for the family.
Kate, the Princess of Wales, is also undergoing treatment for cancer. Pic: Kensington Palace
There remains a lot of uncertainty; the King won’t return to full duties, and his engagements will be adapted to reduce the risk while he recovers. There’s also no confirmation yet about the big set piece events like Trooping the Colour or an overseas state visit.
But this is a significant moment. And the King’s return to public work will start with a personally poignant visit, as he and the Queen meet patients and staff at a cancer treatment centre.
The deaths of the Reading terror attack victims were “probably avoidable” and contributed to by the failings of multiple agencies, an inquest has found.
Friends James Furlong, 36, Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39, and David Wails, 49, were stabbed to death by Khairi Saadallah, now 29, in Forbury Gardens on 20 June 2020.
Three other people were also injured before Saadallah, who shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest), threw away the eight-inch knife and ran off, pursued by an off-duty police officer.
Saadallah was handed a whole-life sentence at the Old Bailey in January 2021 after pleading guilty to the three murders and three attempted murders.
Khairi Saadallah. Pic: Thames Valley Police
Judge Coroner Sir Adrian Fulford today delivered his findings on the killings of history teacher Mr Furlong, pharmaceuticals manager Mr Ritchie-Bennett, and scientist Mr Wails.
Mr Fulford said the deaths “probably would have been avoidable” if the mental health service had given “greater priority to stabilising [Saadallah] and securing access to long-term psychological therapy”.
He added that if his “extremist risk had been better analysed”, Saadallah would probably then have been recalled to custody the day before the attacks, meaning they would never have happened.
The coroner said the deaths of the three men were “contributed to by the failings of multiple agencies”.
Saadallah, who came to the country as a teenager from Libya, where he was trained to fight as a child soldier for a group now banned as a terrorist organisation in the UK, had a long history of offending and was released from prison on licence just 15 days before the attack.
Saadallah had a long history of offending. Pic: PA
The inquest heard six weeks of evidence looking at his management while he was in jail and on probation, his mental health and the assessment and response to his risk of terrorism.
The Old Bailey heard the Home Office dealt with Saadallah with “woeful inadequacy”, while he was referred to the government’s Prevent de-radicalisation programme four times.
MI5 “triaged” him on four separate occasions, once opening a “lead investigation”, but the security service said they found no evidence he planned to leave the country or commit an attack.
Saadallah had a string of previous convictions for offences including violence and possession of a knife, and spent repeated spells in jail between 2015 and 2020.
Prison intelligence reports showed a pattern of fighting, threats to staff, self-harming and suspected drug use, along with references to extremism.
A counsellor said she “harassed” mental health services to examine him in the year before the killings, while one probation officer broke down in court as she recalled unknowingly “managing an unconvicted murderer”.
The inquest also heard Thames Valley Police officers did not find a knife at Saadallah’s home during a “welfare check” the day before the attack after they were not told he was threatening to harm himself and others.
‘Catastrophically failed’
Mr Furlong’s father Gary said the victims’ families had listened with “shock and utter disappointment” to the evidence, which had led them to “fundamentally question” whether their faith in authorities to protect their loved ones was misplaced.
“Our boys did not stand a chance,” he said.
Dr Wails’s brother Andrew said UK state agencies had “catastrophically failed” in their duty to protect the public from Saadallah and that the attack “destroyed our lives”.
Calling Saadallah a “cowardly terrorist”, Andrew Wails said: “[He] had been a member of a proscribed terrorist group and murdered people, he confessed to throwing grenades at people in public places in Libya, yet he was let into the UK and allowed to remain here.”
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‘The state catastrophically failed in its duty’
Parallels to London Bridge stabbings
Nick Harborne, chief of Reading Refugee Support Group, also said the stabbings “could have been avoided” having warned various bodies about Saadallah months before the attack.
When the news of the stabbings broke, Mr Harborne “instantly knew it was Saadallah”.
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Reading attack ‘could have been avoided’
He said he had tried to communicate with Prevent, community mental health services, and the Probation Service, to notify them of Saadallah’s “potential for violence”.
Mr Harborne likened Saadallah’s trajectory to the terrorist Usman Khan who committed the 2019 London Bridge stabbings, and he referred to the attack in his communications with the various agencies.
“There is stuff we could all have done better… The tragedy didn’t have to happen,” he said.
Assistant Chief Constable Tim Metcalfe of Counter Terrorism Policing South said was “still work to do” to address the issues surrounding the case.
He added: “In this moment it is also important to reflect on the terrorist threat that we in UK policing and our partners face. It is significant and continually evolving.
“Many of the cases we are working on now involve people with complex mental health and social needs. We also are seeing more individuals with mixed or unclear ideology, who can be more difficult to assess and manage.”
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