An insurance worker who stabbed a father to death on a busy high street while his young daughter was buying sweets has been jailed for 18 years. Abraham Omotoso, 27, was sentenced at the Old Bailey on Friday for the manslaughter of Mohamed Al-Zufairi, 34, outside a Poundland store on Wealdstone high street in north-west London.
The attack on 27 February left the father of two with a stab wound to the heart, and he died in hospital a day later. The court heard there had been “bad blood” between the families. Omotoso, from Wealdstone, initially denied any involvement before claiming he acted in self-defence.
Following the stabbing, Omotoso purchased a one-way flight to Lagos, Nigeria, but was arrested at Gatwick Airport after airline staff became suspicious of a lone traveller carrying only hand luggage. Judge Nicholas Cooke thanked airport staff for their “quick thinking” in thwarting his attempt to flee the country.
Sentencing, Judge Cooke described the case as “an example of a knife fatality taking place in a busy high street,” noting that members of the public had witnessed the aftermath and parts of the incident. He highlighted a “harrowing further aggravating feature”: although not physically present, the victim had shortly before been with his seven- or eight-year-old daughter, who had walked to the shops with him to buy sweets and returned home without him.
In a statement, the victim’s brother Jafar said: “Mohamed was a family man. His family came first. I think it has hit his daughter the hardest. She did not see her dad being stabbed, but was with him.”
