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A Ugandan-American man, Christopher Okello Onyum, has been sentenced to death for the murder of four young children he stabbed to death at a kindergarten in Kampala, Uganda.
Onyum was arrested on April 2, 2026, when he tried to flee the daycare centre, where he killed the little children, aged between 15 months and two-and-a-half years.
Prosecutors said Onyum, who holds Ugandan and US citizenship, confessed to the crime, believing the “human sacrifice” would help him become rich, although he eventually pleaded not guilty in court.
The judge rejected a claim of insanity, saying the “accurate and precise manner” of the killings made it clear it was pre-planned.
“I hereby sentence him to suffer death,” she said in court, to cheers from the public on Thursday.
“He targeted them in their defenceless state and went ahead to slaughter them like animals… and had no fear, no shame, no consideration for human life. I have also considered that the convict has not shown any remorse at all, because I would have at least expected an apology from him to the families of the babies, ” she said.
The court found that Onyum had searched online for Islamic State beheadings and local schools with young children, but it was not clear if there was any political or religious motivation for the attack. Earlier, a heartbreaking testimony was revealed to the court from a staff member at the Ggaba Early Childhood Development Centre.
“At first I thought he was beating a child. “When I asked him why he was beating our children, before he responded, I saw Kaisha (one of the victims) against a wall in the pool of blood. He got up and he had a knife in his hand. He was so quick that he immediately grabbed another child. I got one of the bicycles the children used. I threw it at him. When I threw the bicycle at him he left the child and started running after me. I ran but I later fell down. When I got up I found out he had cut the second child,” she told the court at the start of the trial.
The victims’ parents also testified, recounting their final morning with their children before dropping them at kindergarten, the phone call that alerted them to the attack, and the heartbreaking discovery of the bodies at the hospital.
