Endris Mohammed, a taxi driver, has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 33 years for murdering his two young children. The 47-year-old was convicted at Birmingham Crown Court of killing Saros Endris, aged eight, and his six-year-old sister, Leanor, by smothering them with a petrol-soaked rag.
The children died of airway obstruction after suffering chemical burns to their faces. Mohammed also received a concurrent 10-year sentence for the attempted murder of his wife, Penil Teklehaimanot, who was asleep when he killed the children and set their home on fire.
In the early hours of 28 October 2016, Mohammed tampered with a gas pipe and started a fire near the front door of the family home in Hamstead, Birmingham. He had bought a fuel can and three litres of petrol around 12 hours before the killings, and later set his taxi alight, sustaining burns to his head.
Passing sentence, Mr Justice Gilbart rejected Mohammed's claim that he had planned to take his own life, describing the act as a 'terrible criminal enterprise' designed to kill the children and their mother. The judge accepted that Mohammed was suffering from a depressive illness, but said it fell short of diminished responsibility.
The court heard that Mohammed met Teklehaimanot in 2006 after both arrived in the UK from east Africa as asylum seekers. Paying tribute to the children, the judge said they were happy, cheerful and engaging, and that Mohammed had 'deliberately snuffed out their young lives'.
