Frenzied knife attack on mum with child outside Coventry church results in 15 year prison sentence - The Coventry Observer

Frenzied knife attack on mum with child outside Coventry church results in 15 year prison sentence

Coventry Editorial 25th Oct, 2019 Updated: 25th Oct, 2019   0

AS a knifeman carried out a frenzied knife attack on her as she left a Coventry church, a mother who believed she was about to die turned away and gently put her young son down to save him.

Yosief Weldemaryam’s victim, whose mother had been warned to expect her and the little boy in a coffin, survived the attack only thanks to the skill of the surgeons who operated on her.

And at Warwick Crown Court, Weldemaryam (28) of no fixed address, was given what is known as a ‘hybrid order’ after he had pleaded guilty to attempted murder.

Classing him as a dangerous offender, Judge Andrew Lockhart QC sentenced him to 15 years in prison, of which he will have to serve at least ten years before the Parole Board can consider his release.




If he is freed before serving the full sentence, he will then by on licence for the rest of the term and for an additional five years.

But Judge Lockhart also made an order under the Mental Health Act that Weldemaryam, who he heard suffers from paranoid schizophrenia with persecutory delusions, should first be detained for treatment in a secure psychiatric unit.


Once it is considered safe for him to be discharged, if it is still within the period of the custodial term, he will then be moved to a prison to complete his sentence there.

The court had heard that on Sunday April 8 last year Yodit Mogos, who is in her 30’s and originally from Eritrea, went to St Margaret’s church in Walsgrave Road, Coventry, for a midnight mass to celebrate the Christian Orthodox Easter.

She had taken her young son, then aged two years and two months, with her, but he had cried, so she contacted her husband to come to collect him to take him home.

At just after 3am she left the church with the little boy in her arms to take him to her husband, who was in his car nearby, when Weldemaryam ran up behind her and attacked her with a 31cm kitchen knife.

Before sentencing Weldemaryam, Judge Lockhart read from Mrs Mogon’s statement in which she said: “Prior to being stabbed my mother back home had received information from the offender’s brother that she was to expect the coffin of her daughter and grandchildren.

“With this in mind, I thought ‘let it happen to me but do not hurt my son.’ This is why I slowly turn whilst being stabbed and gently place my son on the ground.

“He intended to kill me that day to fulfil the promise made to my mother to send me and my children back home in coffins, but he did not succeed.”

Prosecutor Peter Grieves-Smith had told the court that after the attack, Weldemaryam ran off, chased by members of the congregation, and later handed himself in at a police station.

Meanwhile, Mrs Mogos was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries including bleeding to the artery around the stomach, a lacerated kidney, a perforated stomach, and a perforation to the vein taking blood to her heart.

Such was the extent of the bleeding that she needed 31 units of blood and plasma during an initial operation, but in the intensive care unit she then developed signs of liver failure.

A liver transplant surgeon from Birmingham was brought in to operate, during which she needed another 30 units of blood and plasma, and it was found part of her liver had died.

Mrs Mogos was in hospital for 44 days, during which she was transferred to the Queen Elizabeth in Birmingham, and as well as severe scarring and the damage to her liver, she has been left with an enlarged heart, said Mr Grieves-Smith.

But despite her injuries and the on-going effects it has had on her and her young son, Mrs Mogos added in her statement: “I don’t hate him, I feel sorry for him. I have forgiven him in my heart. I am just still living this nightmare.”

At a previous hearing psychiatrist Dr Sajid Muzaffar said Weldemaryam had ‘a severe mental health disorder,’ and suffers from ‘schizo-effective disorder, depressive type,’ as well as a thought disorder and delusional and paranoid beliefs.

“He reported that he felt under threat and believed he was going to be killed, and that the victim and her husband were leading a plan to kill him, and that there was a computer-led operation that was tracking him,” said Mr Muzaffar.

As to the motive for the attack, Judge Lockhart said Mrs Mogos’s husband had known Weldemaryam in Eritrea and thereafter in Coventry, and they had worked together, but for reasons which were unclear appear to have fallen out.

Weldemaryam claimed Mrs Mogos had put something negative about him on Facebook, and that her husband was a threat and that she was orchestrating people against him.

Sentencing Weldemaryam, Judge Lockhart told him: “This was the result of a plan to kill made across the course of weeks, if not months. It was a premeditated attempt to kill.

“She was fatally wounded, but survived only through the skill of paramedics, surgeons and dedicated nursing staff.

“An intention to kill is established, and failure to implement that was due to no act on your part, you intended that death would follow.

“I find that in this case anger was the trigger, overlain with delusional beliefs.

“This offence, where death so nearly occurred, was caused by anger which you could not completely control due to your condition. There is no guarantee that this will not happen again. I cannot begin to say when this risk will end.”

Explaining the sentence, the judge added: “You will be detained in hospital for as long as necessary. If and when it is no longer necessary, and if your sentence has not expired, you will be transferred to prison where you will serve the remainder of the sentence which I have imposed.”

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