A Channel migrant who was known to police in four countries murdered a restaurant owner at random after his asylum application was rejected, a court has heard.
Somalian national Haybe Cabdiraxmaan Nur, 47, plunged a knife into the chest of father-of-three Gurvinder Singh Johal, 37 at a Lloyds Bank in Derby, before ‘calmly’ walking out of the branch. He pleaded guilty to his murder in August.
Mr Johal, known to friends as Danny, lived in West Bromwich with his wife and children aged five, three and one, but owned several businesses including the Hen and Chickens Bar and Grill restaurant in Shelton Lock.
He had been visiting the bank to withdraw cash to pay his staff.
Shocking CCTV played to Nur’s sentencing hearing at Derby Crown Court today showed the failed asylum seeker walking into the branch on St Peter’s Street on May 6 – for just 22 seconds.
Without hesitation, he is seen walking up to Mr Johal, stabbing him in the chest and walking straight out.
The knife was ‘left protruding’ from Mr Johal’s chest and he was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
Several relatives of Mr Johal who were watching the CCTV in court became so distressed that they had to leave the hearing.
Louis Mably KC, prosecuting, told the court that Nur had arrived in the UK by small boat on October 22 2024, but was told four days later he did not have reasonable grounds for applying for asylum because he was not a victim of human trafficking.
His asylum application was formally refused in January and, by March, he had been served with a notice of immigration bail requiring him not to work.
The court heard that he had previously been arrested in the UK for violence and public order offences in December 2024, when he was heard shouting ‘f*** the English’ and ‘white racist bastards’ while trying to run into traffic.
On that occasion, he was said to have headbutted a construction worker, but no charges were brought against him.
But Mr Mably said that the defendant was also known to the police in four European countries – France, Luxembourg, Italy and Germany – in the years before he arrived in the UK, after being arrested for a variety of offences.
Haybe Cabdiraxmaan Nur, 47, today pleaded guilty to the murder
Gurvinder Singh Johal, 37, was stabbed to death at a Lloyds Bank branch in Derby
In Italy, he was given a one-year suspended sentence in May 2023 for robbery, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and resisting a public official.
He was later arrested for various petty offences in the other European countries, including shoplifting, but was never convicted.
The prosecutor said that, at the time of the killing, the defendant was living in a Home Office flat in Derby which was managed by Serco.
On the morning of the attack, Nur’s friend Mohamed Abdirohman described seeing him drinking vodka and beer, ‘like he was having a party by himself’, the court heard.
Nur then rang a charity called Migrant Help around two hours before the attack, during which he could be heard ‘wailing’, complaining about how he was treated by the authorities and saying ‘he was going to go to 500 people and he was going to kill them and, after that, he was going to kill himself’, the prosecuctor said.
‘The Defendant said he was doing that because he was not getting any of his rights in the UK – he had not got his right to remain, he was not permitted to work despite his skills, he was forced to lose his ability and skills because he was being kept in an open-door prison,’ Mr Mably said.
He added: ‘He said he was going to get a knife, stab as many people as he can see in front of him and the police can come and do whatever they want to do with him but he was going to do it.’
In a second call to the charity, around an hour before the attack, he said ‘he would be going after the people who said they were doctors, or the police, or people working at the Home Office’.
The defendant ‘he did not care that Allah may punish him for (killing himself), because he was in a worse hell now’ and the UK authorities had made him live ‘like an animal’.
‘The defendant said he would go live on social media and talk about how rubbish the UK is before butchering himself as a livestream,’ the prosecutor said.
The charity alerted East Midlands Ambulance Service, who contacted Derbyshire Police, but he was not stopped in time.
Mr Johal was fatally stabbed at Lloyds Bank on St Peters Street in Derby
At the time of the attack, the defendant was living in a Home Office flat in Derby which was managed by Serco
Nur left his home address at around 2.07pm and was seen on CCTV sitting on a bench on the corner of St Peter’s Street with half a bottle of vodka between his legs.
At 2.32pm, Nur walked into the bank branch.
The prosecutor said: ‘At that time, Gurvinder Johal was last in a queue of persons waiting to speak to the cashiers.
‘The defendant approached Mr Johal, produced a knife, and stabbed Mr Johal in the chest forcefully. Mr Johal appeared confused and collapsed to the floor.’
Mr Johal. who had been on Facetime to a friend at the time, landed on his front, which caused the handle of the knife to break off and the blade to be pushed further into his chest.
Mr Mably added: ‘The defendant left the knife protruding from Mr Johal’s chest and calmly left the bank.’
Nur returned to his flat, where he was then attented to by the paramedics who had been called by the migrant charity to his address – unaware of the crime he had just committed.
The defendant was discharged at the scene at 3.51pm and remained there until the police arrived at his address at 5.58pm to arrest him, finding him asleep under a duvet on the floor.
When he was being driven to the police station, Nur was recorded on an officer’s bodycam saying: ‘What can you take from me? I did this intentionally.’
He then began to abuse officers once back at the police station, telling one constable: ‘Your wife, tomorrow, you are dead.’
Nur was again recorded on bodycam describing the officers as animals who will cut him to pieces before making a reference to Osama bin Laden.
Mr Mably described the account that the defendant had given to border officials when he first arrived in the UK.
‘In summary he stated that his wife was killed by close family members because she was from a different tribe in 2016,’ he said.
‘He had left Somalia in 2016 and travelled to Libya where he was treated like an animal and kept against his will.
‘After four months, a friend had sent him $1,800 to board a boat to Europe.
‘He had stayed in a camp, spent time in France and Italy where he stayed in camps and sold cigarettes illegally. He had paid €400 to travel to the UK which he arranged for himself.’
Nur was said not to remember committing the offence because he was so drunk at the time.
Earlier in the hearing, a heartbreaking statement had been read to the court on behalf of the family of Mr Johal.
It said: ‘We stand before you today broken and grieving to speak of the unbearable pain and emptiness that has consumed our lives since Gurvinder Singh Johal – our son, our Danny – was so brutally taken from us.
‘To the world he may have been many things: a devoted husband, a loving father, a cherished brother, and a loyal friend. But to us, and to God, he was simply a good man. Our Gurvinder. Our light.’
The statement described the anguish they had suffered trying to explain to Mr Johal’s children that their father was not coming home.
‘The deepest wound of all is the impact on Gurvinder’s children – heir innocence has been stolen,’ it said.
‘Once carefree and joyful, they are now withdrawn, fearful, and confused. They ask, “When is Daddy coming back?”, they say, “A monster took Daddy away”.
‘We are left with the impossible task of explaining that he is never coming back. How do you tell a child that their father has been taken from them forever?’
James Horne KC, defending, said Nur was ‘in a state of flux and crisis’ at the time and struggling to cope with his alcohol dependency as well as the sense of injustice he felt about Britain’s asylum system.
A psychiatrist who assessed Nur was said to have concluded: ‘He resorted to the violent act as a terrible expression of his anger and hopelessness.’
Nur will be sentenced later today.
