Gang that stabbed man to death in Chapeltown slaying to be sentenced today
Three men found guilty of murdering a teenager in Chapeltown in a cold-blooded gangland killing are to be sentenced this morning.
Emmanuel Nyabako died from “catastrophic” bleeding after being stabbed 17 times. He was stripped naked and dragged into the road before being left to die by the masked gang.
The brutal killing was in retaliation to a shooting earlier in the night.
Emile Riggon, 23, Jozeffi Jeffers, 28, and Phillip Bryant, 33, were all found guilty on Thursday of Mr Nyabako’s murder following a lengthy trial at Leeds Crown Court that began in June.
They all face a mandatory life sentence, with the judge to decide this morning the minimum length they each must serve.
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 went looking for Mr Nyabako following an 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 second 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 pistols.
Prosecutor Mr McKone told the jury: “They meted out the most savage punishment for what he [Mr Nyabako] had done. They acted as a team. This was taking the law into their own hands.”
But he conceded that had Mr Nyabako survived the assault, he too 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.
Bryant, of Skinner lane, Leeds, was arrested shortly after the fatal stabbing. Riggon, of no fixed address, was arrested after he touched down on a flight from Turkey in November last year. His DNA was found on the body of Mr Nyabako.
Meanwhile, Jeffers, of Hyde Park Road, Leeds, was arrested from an address in the city on November 14.