Thomas Wei Huang: Public schoolboy who attacked sleeping students with hammers named for first time
A public schoolboy who claimed he was sleepwalking when he attacked two students and a teacher with hammers can now be named.
It comes after a judge lifted an order preventing the identification of 17-year-old international student, Thomas Wei Huang.
Last week, he was detained for life with a minimum term of 12 years after he was found guilty of three charges of attempted murder in June following a 10-week trial.
Blundell’s school, Tiverton, Devon
Police at the school after the attack
Huang, who turns 18 in January, was dressed only in his boxer shorts when he repeatedly hit his dormmates as they slept in one of the boarding houses at the co-ed Blundell’s School in Tiverton, Devon, in June last year.
Both boys suffered skull fractures, as well as injuries to their ribs, spleen, a punctured lung and internal bleeding. He then attacked a teacher who attempted to intervene.
They had been asleep in cabin-style beds when Huang climbed up and attacked them shortly before 1am on 9 June last year.
Maths teacher Henry Roffe-Silvester told Exeter Crown Court he was asleep in his own quarters when he was awoken by noises coming from the boarding house and went to investigate.
He said he saw a silhouetted figure standing in front of him in the room who then turned and repeatedly hit him over the head with a hammer.
“Physically I stumbled backwards into the corridor. There was a second blow – I can’t remember if it was before I stumbled back – that’s a little bit hazy for me,” said Mr Roffe-Silvester, who suffered six blows to the head.
Another student heard Mr Roffe-Silvester shouting and swearing as he fled the bedroom and dialled 999 – believing there was an intruder.
The two boys were discovered in their beds a few minutes later.
Blundell’s School, Tiverton, Devon. Pic: PA
Huang, from Malaysia, who was 16 at the time, admitted carrying out the attacks but said he was sleepwalking. He denied three charges of attempted murder on the basis he was not guilty by reason of insanity.
But the court was told he had an obsession with the killing of children and hammers, which he said he kept by his bed for “protection” from the “zombie apocalypse”.
Prosecutors said the boy armed himself with three claw hammers and waited for the two boys to be asleep before attacking them.
At his sentencing hearing last month, judge Mrs Justice Cutts said experts could not say how long he would pose a risk to the public as she jailed him for life with a minimum term of 12 years.
“You planned your offences and used hammers you had bought as weapons,” she told Huang, adding that, as an “intelligent boy”, he “knew full well if you hit the boys multiple times with the hammers they would die”.
She told him there was a significant risk he could repeat his attack and therefore he posed “a high level of danger to the public because of the nature of your offences”.
In evidence, Huang told the jury he wanted to come to England to study in a boarding school and was “excited” to do so.
Asked if he was happy at the school, he replied: “Yes I was. I liked my friends, my teachers and the academic aspect of it. I didn’t like the sports and the food at the school.”
He described life at the boarding school, including pupils sharing takeaways and tubs of sweets.
The court heard Huang’s brother, who is two years older than him, also went to Blundell’s.
Huang can be named after a court official confirmed his lawyers would not be appealing the judge’s earlier decision to lift the reporting restriction, which was made at the sentencing hearing following an application by the PA news agency.
Footage of the moment 10-year-old Sara Sharif’s alleged killers were detained after police boarded their plane back to the UK has been played in court.
As they are approached by officers, Sara‘s stepmother Beinash Batool is heard saying: “I think you’re looking for us.”
Batool, 30, Sara’s father Urfan Sharif, 42, and uncle Faisal Malik, 29, are accused of carrying out a campaign of abuse against her culminating in her death at her family home in Surrey on 8 August last year.
The defendants, along with five of Sara’s siblings, aged between one and 13, flew to Pakistan the following day.
Sara’s body was found by police in a bunkbed on 10 August after Sharif called police from Pakistan to say he had beaten her “too much” for being “naughty”.
A murder investigation was launched involving agencies including Interpol and the National Crime Agency to locate the defendants.
They returned to the UK on a flight from Dubai to Gatwick Airport on 13 September.
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‘I beat her up too much’
The clips of officers’ body-worn video shown to the jury on Friday captured the moment police boarded the plane and detained the defendants at 7.42pm, seven minutes after touchdown.
After Batool addresses the officers, Sharif, who had been sitting next to her, is asked to follow them.
The three were then taken off the plane and arrested.
Pic: Surrey Police
A post-mortem examination established Sara had sustained extensive and significant injuries over a sustained period prior to her death.
The jury heard on Friday how concerns were raised by Sara’s school about bruising on her body in June 2022 and March 2023.
Read more:
Stepmother said Sara Sharif’s father beat her up ‘like crazy’, jury told
Sara Sharif ‘never smiled once’, jury told
Several items seized from Sara’s home were also reviewed by the court, including a leather belt which had full DNA samples at both ends for Sara, Sharif, and Malik.
A cricket bat was also found to have Sara’s DNA profile on it, along with the DNA samples of Sharif and Malik.
Neither item had a DNA trace of Batool.
The court also reviewed the defendants’ bank accounts – both joint and separate.
All three defendants have pleaded not guilty to murder and causing or allowing the death of a child.
The trial continues.
Six teenagers have been arrested after a 13-year-old girl was found with multiple stab wounds on a roadside near Hull.
Police said she was found around 6.50am on the A63 in Hessle with “life-threatening injuries” including “lacerations to her neck, abdomen, chest and back”.
Four boys and two girls – aged between 14 and 17 – were quickly arrested in a nearby wooded area and are being questioned on suspicion of attempted murder.
Members of the public came to the girl’s aid before emergency services arrived, Humberside Police said.
Detective Superintendent Simon Vickers said they “believe the attackers knew the victim” and the circumstances are still being investigated.
“The girl remains in hospital in critical condition and her family are being supported by officers at this difficult time,” he added.
The boys arrested are aged 14, 15, 16 and 17, and the girls 14 and 15.
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Cordons are in place around a wooded area off Ferriby High Road while investigations continue.
Police said they would have an increased presence in the area over the weekend and have asked anyone with information or video to get in touch, or contact Crimestoppers anonymously.
UK
Ex-soldier Daniel Khalife tells court it was a ‘foolish idea’ to have someone with his ‘skillset’ in prison
A former soldier has told a jury his escape from Wandsworth prison to avoid being held with sex offenders and terrorists showed his “skillset”.
Daniel Khalife, 23, who was being held accused of passing secrets to Iran said he was “never a real spy” but planned a fake defection to the state following his arrest after watching American television show Homeland.
He said he wanted to be moved to a high-security unit because he was getting unwanted attention from the sex offenders on the vulnerable prisoners wing and feared a move to Belmarsh prison because, as a British soldier, terrorists wanted to kill him.
Khalife said he first wanted to “make a show” of escaping, acting suspiciously and covering himself in soot from a food delivery lorry on 21 August last year, while he was working in the prison kitchen.
He was spotted and reported to security but was “pretty shocked” when nothing happened so decided to take the “full measure,” he told the jury.
A makeshift sling. Pic: Met Police
Talking about his escape for the first time at his Woolwich Crown Court trial, Khalife told how he fashioned a makeshift sling from kitchen trousers and carabiners used by inmates to keep their possessions safe from rats.
He attached it to the Bidfood lorry on 1 September last year, to see if it would be spotted by officers at Wandsworth or other prisons on the delivery route.
“I put the two carabiners and the makeshift rope underneath the lorry,” he said.
“When I had made the decision to actually leave the prison I was going to do it properly so I tested the security not just in Wandsworth
“Strangely, over the coming days, I could see it but it wasn’t spotted in Wandsworth or any other prison.”
Then on the morning of 6 September, Khalife said he concealed himself underneath the lorry, resting his back on the sling as the lorry was searched.
“They did normal checks around with torches but they didn’t find me. After that, a governor came to the tunnel and said, ‘Have you searched the vehicle?’
“I was facing upwards. There was action around the lorry.”
Daniel Khalife joined the Army aged 16
He said that when the vehicle stopped he “came out underneath the lorry and stayed in the prone position” until the lorry moved off.
Khalife, who joined the Army aged 16 and took up a post with the Royal Signals, based in Beacons barracks, Staffordshire, said he made no attempt to leave the country and had no intention to “run away” from the charges he was facing.
He was arrested three days later on the footpath of the Grand Union Canal in Northolt, west London, after a nationwide manhunt.
Asked why he had not handed himself in after his escape, Khalife said: “I was finally demonstrating what a foolish idea it was to have someone of my skillset in prison. What use was that to anyone?”
“I accept that I left the prison and didn’t have any permission to do so,” he said. “I accept absolutely that I shouldn’t have done what I did.”
Daniel Khalife
Inspired by Homeland
The court has heard Khalife initiated contact with Iranian intelligence officers after he was told he could not pass developed vetting because his mother was born in Iran.
Khalife told MI5 he wanted to be a “double agent” and he said in court he thought he would be “congratulated” but described his arrest as like a “punch in the face”.
Read more from Sky News:
Teenager who murdered 15-year-old ex-girlfriend jailed for life
Public schoolboy guilty of hammer attack named for first time
Wearing a blue checked shirt and chinos, he said police were “blinded at the prospect of a successful prosecution” but he did not think being in prison would be in “the public interest”.
“I didn’t do anything that harmed our national security. I wanted to put myself in a position where I could help my country,” he said.
“I believed I could continue my work actually located in the state – the state being Iran.”
Khalife said he took inspiration from watching Homeland, starring Claire Danes and Damian Lewis, in which Americans and terrorists go undercover, on Netflix.
“I had seen one of the characters in the programme had actually falsely defected to a particular country and utilised that position to further the national security interests of that character’s country,” he said.
“The country in question, Iran, thought it was real. She did it to further the interests of her own country.”
Khalife told jurors he is a “patriot”, adding: “I do love my country. All I wanted to do was help. I never wanted to do any harm, I never did do any harm.”
He added: “It is tragic it has come to this and I would do anything to go back to my career.”
Khalife, from Kingston, southwest London, denies a charge of committing an act prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state under the Official Secrets Act between 1 May 2019 and 6 January 2022.
He has also pleaded not guilty to a charge under the Terrorism Act of eliciting information about Armed Forces personnel on 2 August 2021, perpetrating a bomb hoax on or before 2 January 2023 and escaping from prison on 6 September last year.
The trial continues.
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