Khayri Mclean murder: Teenage killers named as judge cites ‘acute’ concern at attack near Huddersfield school

Jakele Pusey, 15, and his cousin Jovani Harriott, 17, were jailed for life at Leeds Crown Court on Thursday and given minimum terms of 16 and 18 years respectively for the murder of Khayri Mclean. Pusey and Harriott had laid in wait for Khayri, with masks and large knives, near his Huddersfield school in September 2022 and attacked him in front of a number of other horrified school children.

Harriott denied he was a gang member but Pusey admitted a long involvement in gang activity in Huddersfield, which led to him being shot by masked men when he was just 12 years old. PA Media and the BBC made written applications to the judge, Mrs Justice Farbey, to lift the section 45 order banning Pusey and Harriott’s identification.

The applications cited the support of a range of other media organisations, and PA made further verbal representations in court on Thursday on behalf of the packed press benches. The applications stressed the overwhelming public concern about teenage knife crime at the current time, as evidenced by the media interest in this case.

They suggested that naming defendants in cases of this kind boosted likely media interest which, in turn, added to the deterrent effect of the lengthy sentences handed down to the perpetrators.

Richard Wright KC, for Pusey, said his client was barely 15 when the murder took place and outlined his very challenging upbringing.

Mr Wright said identification in the media would have a detrimental effect on Pusey’s rehabilitation, stressing that his frank admissions about his gang-related lifestyle and criminal activities was a sign he was facing up to his wrongdoing.

The barrister also challenged the contention that identifying defendants aided deterrence, saying he had not seen any evidence of this and, in his experience, the children who perpetrated these kinds of offence did not seem to think about the consequences at all.

Mohammed Nawaz KC, for Harriott, said his client was making good progress in custody and was concerned that naming him would have a “real risk of undermining” this. But the court heard that his client is only a few months from his 18th birthday, when he could be named anyway.

The judge said it was a difficult balance between her responsibilities towards the welfare of the two young defendants and principle of open justice – especially with an offence as serious as this one.

Lifting the order, she made reference to the “acute public concern at a national level” about knife crime and the “particular concern in Huddersfield”, where a number of teenagers have died in recent years.

She said: “Khayri was murdered, aged 15, unarmed, in a public street near a school at the end of the school day when schoolchildren came teeming out.

“There is a strong public interest in the full reporting of a murder so close to a school.”

This case was the latest in a series in recent weeks involving the murder of teenagers by other teenagers using knives which have seen judges allowing the naming of the perpetrators by the media.