Gang jailed for 81 years for stabbing rival to death after Leeds gangland shooting
Three members of a gang that brutally stabbed a man to death in revenge for an earlier shooting have been jailed for a total of 81 years.
Emile Riggon, 23, Jozeffi Jeffers, 28, and Phillip Bryant, 33, were all given life sentences at Leeds Crown Court this morning for the killing of Emmanuel Nyabako in Chapeltown last year.
The 19-year-old suffered “catastrophic injuries” on Francis Street after being stabbed multiple times. The masked gang inflicted 17 stab wounds on him, before stripping him naked and dragging his body into the street in a final act of humiliation and to remove any forensic links to his killers.
It came after a shots were fired at two cars containing the defendants, by Mr Nyabako and a 15-year-old boy.
The three were all found guilty of murder following a lengthy trial that began in June.
Bryant, of Skinner lane, was told he must serve at least 27 years behind bars, along with Riggon, of no fixed address, and Jeffers of Hyde Park Road.
Sentencing the three, The Recorder of Leeds Guy Kearl KC, said: “You decided to teach him a lesson.
“As he was beaten to the ground, he was set upon by each of you. It’s clear it was a joint attack.
“You were seeking to humiliate him after exacting your revenge. Each of you took part.
“You left his body on Francis Place as a show of strength and a sign to others. I find in each of your cases, there was an intention to kill.
“You decided to exact revenge as a team. You hunted down Emmanuel before participating in the fatal attack.
At 2am on August 26 last year, three 999 calls were made to police that a gang of males wearing balaclavas were attacking a man with sticks and knives near to Albion House on Francis Street.
At 2.28am the police arrived and found 19-year-old Mr Nyabako laying in the middle of the road fatally injured and wearing nothing but a snood.
He had been strippped after the attack and “dragged or carried” into the middle of the road. Despite the help of arriving paramedics, he was pronounced dead at 3.03am.
A postmortem found that Mr Nyabako suffered 17 “sharp force injuries” to his face, forearms, back and chest. One of the chest wounds had cut a heart muscle which caused arterial damage and the subsequent bleeding which led to his death.
The defendants had gone looking for Mr Nyabako following the earlier incident in which a gun was fired at two cars. Various CCTV footage pieced together by investigators showed Mr Nyaboko and a second male were on an e-bike in the early hours of August in the Chapeltown area.
The footage appeared to show Mr Nyabako holding a machete-type knife, with the other male holding a pistol. Other footage showed the gang of defendants in two cars also in the area.
The younger male was able to flee the gang, but Mr Nyabako was cornered. He was still holding the machete at the time. That was later recovered along with two blank-firing handguns that had been converted to fire adapted ammunition.
Prosecutor Mr McKone previously told the jury that the gang had “meted out the most savage punishment” and were “taking the law into their own hands”.
He conceded that had Mr Nyabako survived the assault, he would have been prosecuted “in all probability”. His accomplice, a 16-year-old who cannot be named, was given two years’ detention earlier this year for his part in the shooting.
As a result of enquiries, Bryant was arrested on September 1 and charged with Emmanuel’s murder and possession of a knife.
At the start of November, detectives issued a public appeal naming Emile Riggon and Louis Grant as wanted suspects for the murder. Enquiries had shown Riggon had travelled to Ireland by ferry on August 27.
On November 14, Jeffers was arrested in a firearms operation at an address in Belle Isle, Leeds, and was charged with murder.
Riggon was arrested on November 28 at Heathrow Airport after arriving on a flight from Istanbul and also later charged with the Emmanuel’s murder.
Louis Grant, aged 28, also known as Louis O’Brien, remains wanted over the murder and enquiries are ongoing to locate him.