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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
Image:
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.

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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
Image:
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
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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
Image:
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
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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
Image:
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
Image:
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.”

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Heidi Alexander says ‘fairness’ will be government’s ‘guiding principle’ when it comes to taxes at next budget

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Heidi Alexander says 'fairness' will be government's 'guiding principle' when it comes to taxes at next budget

Another hint that tax rises are coming in this autumn’s budget has been given by a senior minister.

Speaking to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander was asked if Sir Keir Starmer and the rest of the cabinet had discussed hiking taxes in the wake of the government’s failed welfare reforms, which were shot down by their own MPs.

Trevor Phillips asked specifically if tax rises were discussed among the cabinet last week – including on an away day on Friday.

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Tax increases were not discussed “directly”, Ms Alexander said, but ministers were “cognisant” of the challenges facing them.

Asked what this means, Ms Alexander added: “I think your viewers would be surprised if we didn’t recognise that at the budget, the chancellor will need to look at the OBR forecast that is given to her and will make decisions in line with the fiscal rules that she has set out.

“We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. We have stuck to that.”

Ms Alexander said she wouldn’t comment directly on taxes and the budget at this point, adding: “So, the chancellor will set her budget. I’m not going to sit in a TV studio today and speculate on what the contents of that budget might be.

“When it comes to taxation, fairness is going to be our guiding principle.”

Read more:
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Afterwards, shadow home secretary Chris Philp told Phillips: “That sounds to me like a barely disguised reference to tax rises coming in the autumn.”

He then went on to repeat the Conservative attack lines that Labour are “crashing the economy”.

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Chris Philp also criticsed the government’s migration deal with France

Mr Philp then attacked the prime minister as “weak” for being unable to get his welfare reforms through the Commons.

Discussions about potential tax rises have come to the fore after the government had to gut its welfare reforms.

Sir Keir had wanted to change Personal Independence Payments (PIP), but a large Labour rebellion forced him to axe the changes.

With the savings from these proposed changes – around £5bn – already worked into the government’s sums, they will now need to find the money somewhere else.

The general belief is that this will take the form of tax rises, rather than spending cuts, with more money needed for military spending commitments, as well as other areas of priority for the government, such as the NHS.

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Justice system ‘frustrating’, Met Police chief says – as he admits London’s ‘shameful’ racism challenge

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Justice system 'frustrating', Met Police chief says - as he admits London's 'shameful' racism challenge

It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.

In a wide-ranging interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the commissioner said that relations with minority communities are “difficult for us”, while also speaking about the state of the justice system and the size of the police force.

Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.

“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”

He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.

However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”

Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.

“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.

“The challenge for us is, as we reach in to tackle those issues, that confrontation that comes from that reaching in, whether it’s stop and search on the streets or the sort of operations you seek.

“The danger is that’s landing in an environment with less trust.

“And that makes it even harder. But the people who win out of that [are] all of the criminals.”

Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said racism is still an issue in the force
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Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley

The commissioner added: “I’m so determined to find a way to get past this because if policing in black communities can find a way to confront these issues, together we can give black boys growing up in London equal life chances to white boys, which is not what we’re seeing at the moment.

“And it’s not simply about policing, is it?”

Sir Mark said: “I think black boys are several times more likely to be excluded from school, for example, than white boys.

“And there are multiple issues layered on top of each other that feed into disproportionality.”

‘We’re stretched, but there’s hope and determination’

Sir Mark said the Met is a “stretched service” but people who call 999 can expect an officer to attend.

“If you are in the middle of a crisis and something awful is happening and you dial 999, officers will get there really quickly,” Sir Mark said.

“I don’t pretend we’re not a stretched service.

“We are smaller than I think we ought to be, but I don’t want to give a sort of message of a lack of hope or a lack of determination.”

“I’ve seen the mayor and the home secretary fighting hard for police resourcing,” he added.

“It’s not what I’d want it to be, but it’s better than it might be without their efforts.”

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How police tracked and chased suspected phone thief

‘Close to broken’ justice system facing ‘awful’ delays

Sir Mark said the criminal justice system was “close to broken” and can be “frustrating” for police officers.

“The thing that is frustrating is that the system – and no system can be perfect – but when the system hasn’t managed to turn that person’s life around and get them on the straight and narrow, and it just becomes a revolving door,” he said.

“When that happens, of course that’s frustrating for officers.

“So the more successful prisons and probation can be in terms of getting people onto a law-abiding life from the path they’re on, the better.

“But that is a real challenge. I mean, we’re talking just after Sir Brian Leveson put his report out about the close-to-broken criminal justice system.

“And it’s absolutely vital that those repairs and reforms that he’s talking about happen really quickly, because the system is now so stressed.”

Giving an example, the police commissioner went on: “We’ve got Snaresbrook [Crown Court] in London – it’s now got more than 100 cases listed for 2029.”

Sir Mark asked Trevor Phillips to imagine he had been the victim of a crime, saying: “We’ve caught the person, we’ve charged him, ‘great news, Mr Phillips, we’ve got him charged, they’re going to court’.

“And then a few weeks later, I see the trial’s listed for 2029. That doesn’t feel great, does it?”

Asked about the fact that suspects could still be on the streets for years before going to trial, Sir Mark conceded it’s “pretty awful”.

He added: “If it’s someone on bail, who might have stolen your phone or whatever, and they’re going in for a criminal court trial, that could be four years away. And that’s pretty unacceptable, isn’t it?”

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Leveson explains plans to fix justice system

Challenge to reform the Met

The Met chief’s comments come two years after an official report found the force is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic.

Baroness Casey was commissioned in 2021 to look into the Met Police after serving police officer Wayne Couzens abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard.

She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.

At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Baroness Casey insisted the Met deserved.

However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.

A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.

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UK measles cases rising among children – with leading NHS hospital ‘concerned’

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UK measles cases rising among children - with leading NHS hospital 'concerned'

A leading NHS hospital has warned measles is on the rise among children in the UK, after treating 17 cases since June.

Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool said it is “concerned” about the increasing number of children and young people who are contracting the highly contagious virus.

It said the cases it has treated since June were for effects and complications of the disease, which, in rare cases, can be fatal if left untreated.

“We are concerned about the increasing number of children and young people who are contracting measles. Measles is a highly contagious viral illness which can cause children to be seriously unwell, requiring hospital treatment, and in rare cases, death,” the hospital said in a statement to Sky News.

In a separate open letter to parents and carers in Merseyside earlier this month, Alder Hey, along with the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) and directors of Public Health for Liverpool, Sefton and Knowsley, warned the increase in measles in the region could be down to fewer people getting vaccinated.

The letter read: “We are seeing more cases of measles in our children and young people because fewer people are having the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles and two other viruses called mumps and rubella.

“Children in hospital, who are very poorly for another reason, are at higher risk of catching the virus.”

What are the symptoms of measles?

The first symptoms of measles include:

• A high temperature

• A runny or blocked nose

• Sneezing

• A cough

• Red, sore or watery eyes

Cold-like symptoms are followed a few days later by a rash, which starts on the face and behind the ears, before it spreads.

The spots are usually raised and can join together to form blotchy patches which are not usually itchy.

Some people may get small spots in their mouth too.

What should you do if you think your child has measles?

Ask for an urgent GP appointment or call 111 if you think your child has measles.

If your child has been vaccinated, it is very unlikely they have measles.

You should not go to the doctor without calling ahead, as measles is very infectious.

If your child is diagnosed with measles by a doctor, make sure they avoid close contact with babies and anyone who is pregnant or has a weakened immune system.

The skin of a patient after 3 days of measles infection
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The skin of a patient after three days of measles infection

It comes after a Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) report released earlier this month determined that uptake of vaccines in the UK has stalled over the last decade and is, in many cases, declining.

It said none of the routine childhood vaccinations have met the 95% coverage target since 2021, putting youngsters at risk of measles, meningitis and whooping cough.

The MMR vaccine has been available through the NHS for years. Two doses gives lifelong protection against measles, mumps and rubella.

File photo of a MMR vaccine
Image:
Two doses of the MMR vaccine give lifelong protection against measles, mumps and rubella. Pic: iStock

According to the latest NHS data, Liverpool was one of the cities outside London with the lowest uptake of the MMR vaccination in 2023-2024.

By the time children were five years old, 86.5% had been give one dose, decreasing to 73.4% for a second dose.

The RCPCH report put the nationwide decline down to fears over vaccinations, as well as families having trouble booking appointments and a lack of continuous care in the NHS, with many seeing a different GP on each visit.

Read more from Sky News:
Met Police chief on London’s ‘shameful’ racism challenge
‘My voice box was removed after NHS missed cancer’

In the US, measles cases are at their highest in more than three decades.

Cases reached 1,288 on Wednesday this week, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, with 14 states battling active outbreaks.

The largest outbreak started five months ago in communities in West Texas, where vaccination uptake is low. Since then, three people have died – including two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico – with dozens more in hospital.

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