A knife-obsessed teen who erupted in “white hot” rage and stabbed a 15-year-old schoolgirl to death in a row over a teddy bear was jailed for life today.
Hassan Sentamu was just 17 when he armed himself with a kitchen knife like a character from Netflix drama Top Boy after arranging to meet his ex-girlfriend to swap possessions. When aspiring barrister Elianne Andam challenged him for turning up empty handed, he stabbed her to death on September 27, 2023.
Today Sentamu, from New Addington, near Croydon, appeared in the dock of the Old Bailey to be sentenced by Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb after a jury convicted him of murder in January.
He was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 23 years.
The judge said the case was aggravated by Elianne’s young age and the fact she was going to school, as well as Sentamu’s attempts to hide the murder weapon. She also said Sentamu’s autism was not a mitigating factor.
Mrs Justice Cheema Grubb said: “Elianne was 15 years old when you murdered her. She will always remain 15 and will never realise the potential of her life.”
She said Elianne was a “defenceless girl” and describe her as a “schoolgirl, unarmed and wearing her school uniform”. For possession of bladed article, Sentamu was handed a one-year sentence to be served concurrently.
Elianne Andam’s mother Dorcas told the court in a moving victim impact statement: “I relive that day as I saw the lifeless, bloodied body of my daughter. I held her in my arms, weeping, and she was gone.”
She added: “She loved to sing and dance and make prayers. Our home was full of her music, laughter, and her energy. There was warmth and joy when Elianne was there. She loved life to the fullest and made life worth living. Now the music has stopped, the laughter gone. All that remains is silence, an echoing silence.”
Elianne had a “beautiful heart, mind, and soul”. Mrs Andam addressed Sentamu directly, telling him: “You brutally and mercilessly murdered her in the most humiliating way.” She said it was motivated by “greed, selfishness, and a complete disregard” for her daughter’s life.
“Your actions were senseless, monstrous, and evil. You left the scene without any remorse. Instead you tried to make excuses and cover your act with evil lies,” she said. “The most painful part, one day you will finish your sentence, walk free, and get to see your family.
She added she is serving a life sentence “haunted” by the sight of her daughter’s “lifeless bloody body”. “I urge you to impose the strongest possible sentence. Not just for the life ended but a future destroyed,” she asked the judge.
Elianne Andam’s father Michael said the murder was ‘an act so violent and inhumane, it shattered our world in an instant’.
“No parent should ever have to bury their child, especially not in such a violent and cruel manner,” he said in a statement read out by the prosecutor. “We are not the same people we were before. We move through each day like shadows, drowning in grief and anger,” he said, adding there is ‘an unrelenting ache’ knowing Elianne will never come home.
Michael asked the court to remember Elianne as a young woman who ‘lived to grow to thrive’, and adds there should be the strongest possible sentence to do justice for his daughter.
In a statement on behalf of the wider family, Elianne Andam’s aunt Marian Addow described her as the ‘heart and soul of the family’.
“The brutal act of your actions will forever be a nightmare. How could you do what you did? Why did you do what you did?” she said. “Having to watch our younger sister lose a child has been the most atrocious thing we could have to watch.
“We have all suffered in health, mentally and physically. There is fear if you will be let out you will repeat your actions. Elianne stood up for wrong. Stood up for a friend. And you retaliated with murder.”
Elianne’s counsin Denzil Larbi said in his statement that they had shared a love of rap music and her murder was a “living nightmare”.
Addressing the defendant, he said: “What you did is the most monstrous, evil act imaginable” and Sentamu would forever be the “villain in our story”.
Mr Larbi said the defendant should understand the “unimaginable loss” his actions had caused, saying: “You did not just take a life, you shattered so many others.”
He said: “To see a 15-year-old lying in a mortuary is something no family should have to endure. People say time is the greatest healer. I cannot see how time will ever heal this kind of wound. Time will never bring her back.” He concluded his remarks by saying: “She was only 15. She should still be here.”
Sentamu sat in the dock of the Old Bailey with his head bowed as the victim impact statements were read out by prosecutor Ben Lloyd. Pavlos Panayi KC, defending, said there were “no words that could minimise or justify or excuse what Hassan Sentamu did 18 months ago”. However he said that he had grown up in an abusive home where his father was abusive to his mother.
The court heard when he was just seven years old, when he was in his native Uganda, his mother and sisters boarded an airplane and left him in a boarding school. Mr Panayi said: “This boy did not receive love and understanding but bitter corporal punishment with sticks and poles.”
The Old Bailey was told that Sentamu turned to drugs, alcohol and self-harming to cope with his upbringing. Mr Panayi added: “Hassan’s violent streak did not come out of nowhere. He was not born with them. They came from his lived experiences when he was just a little boy. They cascaded and spiralled because he was subjected to more discipline when he could have benefitted from love and understanding. He had the opposite.”
He is said to have an “extremely low” IQ and mental scars from childhood abuse in his native Uganda. His own mother begged social workers to “take him away” because she could not cope with his outbursts. He first brought a knife to the classroom aged just 12.
Sentamu was bounced from school to school as incidents of self-harm and unprovoked attacks against other children increased in frequency and violence. During a trial at the Old Bailey, jurors were told that Elianne and a group of girls had confronted Sentamu over the callous way he had broken up with his 15-year-old ex-girlfriend.
The girls had mocked Sentamu and squirted water over him outside a Card Factory branch in Whitgift Shopping Centre, Croydon, south London. Raging Sentamu was so incensed by the incident he called a friend afterwards, warning he “cannot let this slide”.
He arranged to meet his former partner the following day to hand back each other’s belongings and draw a line under the relationship. She agreed, especially anxious to recover a teddy bear from her ex-boyfriend, and packed his effects into a plastic bag.
But instead of collecting his ex’s cherished items, Sentamu snatched a knife from a kitchen drawer, pulled on gloves and a mask then got a bus to the shopping centre. When Elianne challenged him, Sentamu chillingly warned her, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
But seconds later he chased her down and repeatedly rained blows down on her with the blade, plunging it 12cm deep into her neck. Sentamu, now 18, admitted manslaughter, claiming he was not in control of his actions because of his autism but the jury, after deliberating for nearly 12 hours, did not accept this defence of diminished responsibility.
He was found guilty of murder.Sentamu was also convicted of illegally possessing a knife. After the verdict Elianne’s father Michael Andam said the verdict “could not bring Elianne back”. “Our world was shattered, and our hearts were broken by the senseless and violent loss of our beloved daughter, Elianne Andam,” he said on behalf of the family outside the Old Bailey.
“At just 15 years old she had her whole life ahead of her, filled with hopes and dreams for the future – all cruelly taken away from her, and from us. Her death has left a void in our lives that can never be filled.”
Sentamu was born in Uganda in 2006 but joined his mother in Britain aged five after she allegedly fled domestic abuse from his father. He was sent back to a Ugandan boarding school aged 11, but returned to the UK three months later.He first brought a knife to school in Britain aged 12, pointing it at his own chest and telling his teacher that he hated his life and would kill himself.
In 2019 he threatened a student at knifepoint on a school trip, and on a different occasion attacked a classmate with a pair of scissors he had stolen from a teacher’s desk. The same year a social worker found Sentamu alone at home with a bag packed by his mother.
When the social worker phoned her, she asked them to “take him away” and Sentamu was placed into foster care. Aged 14, his outbursts intensified and he threatened to chop the tail off his foster carer’s cat if it got in his way. Three weeks before Elianne’s murder, he messaged a friend saying he was contemplating suicide, adding: “The real me is evil, dark and miserable.”
And while on remand at Oakhill Secure Training Centre before his trial, Sentamu threatened another inmate who mentioned Elianne’s murder, shouting at him: “Do you want to end up like her, six feet under? I’ll do the same again.”
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