A 12-year-old boy convicted of the machete murder of teenager Shawn Seesahai idolised a drill rapper who sang about using a rambo knife to attack someone and ‘rip through guts’.
The boy and an accomplice, also 12, were found guilty yesterday of ambushing the 19-year-old in a park in Wolverhampton last November.
His trial heard how the boy – who owned the murder weapon – was fascinated by knives and followed by London drill rapper SJ, real name Jayden O’Neill-Crichlow, who is currently serving life in prison for another machete murder.
SJ (slim Jim) is serving a life sentence for killing a gang rivals and his tracks regularly feature shockingly violent lyrics, including references to blades being ‘saucy’ – meaning covered in blood.
The boy sent his young co-defendant and a schoolgirl and an image of himself with the 16-inch zombie knife that they used to kill Mr Seesahai with the caption ‘Prison Freestyle’ – the name of one of O’Neill-Crichlow’s songs.
Tracks by SJ, real name Jayden O’Neill-Crichlow, regularly feature shockingly violent lyrics, including references to using a knife to ‘rip through guts’
O’Neill-Crichlow (left, with Tim Westwood) was offered a £150,000 recording deal while in jail for murder
The 12-year-old killer of teenager Shawn Seesahai – who was a fan of O’Neill-Crichlow – poses with the machete he and a second boy used to murder him
The pair – who cannot be named due to their age – are believed to be the youngest convicted murderers since Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both aged 11, were found guilty in 1993 of killing two-year-old James Bulger.
In February 2019, O’Neill-Crichlow was part of a group wielding knives, a Samurai sword and a gun who murdered a 19-year-old father Kamali Gabbidon-Lynck in Wood Green.
A year later, aged 17, he was sentenced alongside four other members of the Tottenham-based NPK gang to a minimum of 21 years behind bars.
O’Neill-Crichlow – a member of drill rap group OFB (Original Farm Boys) performed with Tim Westwood and appeared in a YouTube video with the former BBC Radio 1 DJ, posted online not long after his arrest.
And at his sentencing, it emerged the teen rapper had been offered the £150,000 recording contract while on remand in prison awaiting trial.
The trial of Shawn Seesahai’s 12-year-old killer heard how he was a fan of SJ and knew he was a rapper who creates freestyle verses.
But the boy claimed he was unaware of O’Neill-Crichlow’s conviction and ‘didn’t listen to loads’ of his music.
Since being jailed, O’Neill-Crichlow has posted tunes on YouTube using an illegal mobile phone glorifying gang murder and describing how he ‘went insane’ aged 14.
O’Neill-Crichlow’s track Youngest In Charge includes lyrics about getting his ‘shank’ (knife) ‘saucy’ (bloodied)
Aged 17, the rapper was sentenced alongside four other members of the Tottenham-based NPK gang to a minimum of 21 years behind bars
In the old video, uploaded just hours after his initial trial hearing and which was viewed nearly 50,000 times, he also described how he ‘put three opps [gang rivals] on my blade’.
The drill crew he is a member of – the OFB collective – also posted from its YouTube account a video for the teenager’s song Youngest In Charge, which includes lyrics about getting his ‘shank saucy [knife covered in blood]’ and the line, ‘I just see an opp [rival], let me take him out’ followed by the sound of gunshots.
In 2020, O’Neill-Crichlow posted a new track from inside his cell in which he described how hard prison life is and his regret about the murder.
In the nearly one-minute long track, the killer said he was ‘rolling round with little kids’ but was now ‘locked up with some bigger fish’.
He also spoke about how in prison he has ‘crazy fights with guys I don’t know’ and that ‘the life I live is different, riding opposite to prison’ now.
Of the day of the murder, O’Neill-Crichlow said, ‘I just thought it was a day out’ and then ‘I got paid and now it played out’, alongside snoring emojis.
He also raps about how he misses his family saying, ‘my brother and my sisters love me from a distance’ and ‘yeah my brother seen me cry, I hugged my brother and I kissed him’.
The rap video included broken heart and sad face emojis with captions saying ‘miss these days’ alongside phone footage of him hanging out with his friends.
In 2020, O’Neill-Crichlow posted a new track from inside his cell in which he described how hard prison life is and his regret about the murder
In the nearly one-minute long track, the killer said he was ‘rolling round with little kids’ but was now ‘locked up with some bigger fish’
His victim, Kamali Gabbidon-Lynck, was stabbed to death at a hair salon in Wood Green, north London, in 2020
In another line he said: ‘I’m sitting in a cage, eating dinners I can’t take out.’ He then added: ‘I saw music as a way out. Trouble I can stay out.’
Towards the end of the clip, the teen said, ‘I wanna change my life, this life I’m getting sick of’, with a broken heart and praying emoji underneath.
Despite Shawn Seesahai’s young killer insisting he did not listen to a large amount of O’Neill-Crichlow’s music, his conviction will raise fresh questions about the link between drill music and real-life knife crime.
A month-long trial at Nottingham Crown Court was told how the victim was shoulder-barged before being punched, kicked, stamped on and ‘chopped’ at with a machete.
The court heard that they attacked the victim with such force that in one blow the machete almost passed through his body.
Mr Seesahai, from Anguilla in the Caribbean, was also slashed in the legs, kicked, punched and hit so hard on the skull that a piece of bone came away, prosecutor Michelle Heeley KC said.
WOLVERHAMPTON MURDER VICTIM: Shawn Seesahai, 19, was hacked to death by two 12-year-old boys in a park in November 2023
An image retrieved from the phone of one of the attackers showing long knives and swords on a bed
Officers searched a storage space under one of the youngsters’ bed and recovered a machete. He told the jury he bought the blade as he thought it was ‘cool’
He died at 9.11pm on November 13 last year after police were called to the scene at 8.37pm.
Evidence on the killer boy’s phone showed the youth had searched for machetes online on sites where the deadly weapons were for sale for as little as £20.
The boy, who clutched an anti-fidgeting device/toy on the stand, told jurors he bought the machete because he ‘thought it was cool’ to have one – and said that following the murder he had cleaned the blade with bleach because ‘I heard it on music videos when they mention it, bleaching it.’
He claimed that rather than sourcing the weapon online, he had paid ‘a friend of a friend’ £40 for the murder weapon two months before he killed Mr Seesahai.
The Snapchat messages the two killers sent to each other after they butchered Mr Seesahai to death
CCTV footage has revealed his last moments of stabbed teenager Shawn Seesahai. The 19-year-old was murdered by Britain’s youngest knife killers