Trending 
A British court jailed Sudanese asylum seeker Deng Chol Majek for 29 years after he murdered Rhiannon Whyte, 27, at a railway station in Walsall on October 20, 2024.
Majek, who had arrived in the UK by small boat less than three months earlier, tracked Whyte to the station after she finished a shift at the hotel where he had been housed and stabbed her 23 times, delivering 19 head wounds with a screwdriver and causing a fatal brain injury.
Judge Michael Soole described the killing as devastating for Whyte’s family and noted Majek showed no empathy. He called the assault vicious and said the evidence against Majek was overwhelming.
Thousands of asylum seekers are housed in hotels across the UK as part of a controversial policy that Labour says it aims to end. Outside Coventry, far-right campaigner Tommy Robinson and others waved England flags during the sentencing.
Whyte’s family described Majek as “demonic and inhuman” in statements at the court. The trial revealed that Majek, who entered the UK in July 2024, had been flagged by hotel security for repeatedly staring at female staff. No motive for the killing was given; Majek had brushed past Whyte earlier in the evening as he left the hotel for a cigarette.
After the attack, Majek was seen on security cameras wiping blood from his trousers, returning to the hotel, changing his bloodstained flip-flops for trainers, and then dancing with other residents in a car park near emergency vehicles. Whyte’s mother, Donna Whyte, told Majek he should never see the outside world again and vowed to keep her daughter’s memory alive.
Majek was unanimously convicted by jurors after about two hours of deliberation of murder and possession of a screwdriver as an offensive weapon. He had denied the murder charge, claiming he was 18 at the time, but age assessments put him between 25 and 28.
