Sudanese migrant guilty of murdering asylum hotel worker after stabbing her to death with screwdriver
Deng Chol Majek was found guilty on Friday of the murder of hotel worker Rhiannon Whyte.
An asylum seeker has been found guilty of murdering a hotel worker after she was stabbed 19 times in the head with a screwdriver at a railway station.
Listen to this article
Sudanese migrant Deng Chol Majek, who claims to be 19, was found guilty on Friday of the murder of hotel worker Rhiannon Whyte.
The hotel worker was stabbed in the head with a screwdriver 19 times in the attack on 20 October last year.
Jurors at Wolverhampton Crown Court took two hours and five minutes to unanimously find Majek guilty of murder and possessing a screwdriver as an offensive weapon.
Majek had denied the murder of Ms Whyte and possession of a screwdriver as an offensive weapon, but jurors returned a guilty verdict on Friday.
Prosecutors showed the court CCTV evidence of Deng Chol Majek following Rhiannon Skye Whyte from the Park Inn hotel, in Walsall, where she worked, to the nearby Bescot Stadium station where the attack took place.
Wolverhampton Crown Court has heard that Ms Whyte was stabbed 23 times on a platform at Walsall’s Bescot Stadium station on October 20 last year, and died of her injuries in hospital three days later.
Prosecutors allege DNA evidence also proved Majek was Ms Whyte’s attacker and that he also visited a shop to buy beer shortly after the late-night attack.
Majek claimed he had never spoken to the hotel worker during the three months he lived at the hotel.
Majek told the court he was at Walsall’s Park Inn hotel, where Ms Whyte worked and he lived, at the time she was stabbed and suffered a fatal brain stem injury.
Before sending the jury out, trial judge Mr Justice Soole instructed the panel that their first task would be to appoint a foreman to chair their discussions.
In her closing speech to the jury on Thursday, Michelle Heeley KC alleged that Majek had been “utterly callous” when he was seen dancing in a car park after Ms Whyte had been stabbed.
Addressing whether jurors could be sure Majek was the person who attacked Ms Whyte, Ms Heeley said: “You may think it’s not really a difficult question. I suggest his answers to you are laughable. He is trying to meet the overwhelming evidence, and he has failed.”
Defence barrister Gurdeep Garcha KC told the jury: “The only issue is, has the prosecution made you sure that he’s the person that followed Rhiannon Whyte and inflicted those injuries upon her.
“There are very significant gaps in the prosecution evidence and given those gaps, the question for you is, and remains, can you be sure that he is the attacker in view of all the gaps and all the evidence that they don’t have?”