Two found guilty of murdering teenager in his bed

Two men were convicted at the Old Bailey today of shooting an innocent teenage boy in his bed with a Mac-10 "spray and pray" sub-machinegun.

The execution ended 48 hours of bloody violence and killings in Peckham as gangsters fell out over money.

Michael Dosunmu, 15, was the victim of mistaken identity as the gunmen had sought revenge on his brother Hakeem, a drug dealer allied with a gang boss who had murdered a friend of the killers.

The two factions had fallen out over the proceeds of a series of "cash-in-transit" robberies at shops and banks across London.

Mohammed Sannoh, 19, known as "Striker", and Abdi Omar Noor, 22, thought they had been "bumped" of a fair share of the cash.

In the early hours of 6 February last year, two masked men burst into the brothers' home in Diamond Street, Peckham, stormed upstairs and sprayed Hakeem's bedroom with gunfire.

Hakeem was away but Michael, a church-going schoolboy who had no gang involvement, was asleep under his duvet and was killed almost instantly.

Noor, a Somalian from Camberwell, and Sannoh, originally from Sierra Leone and living in Peckham, were found guilty of murder after the jury deliberated for more than 41 hours.

They will be sentenced to life tomorrow when the victim's parents, Rasak and Shakira, will describe the impact of the murder on their lives.

Mr Dosunmu said today he had punched the air on the guilty verdicts, adding that he "hated" the killers "because they had done something very, very callous".

During the month-long trial the jury heard that on the night of the murder Michael and his older sister Shakira were on their own at home. Their mother was in Nigeria visiting relatives and their father had been taken to hospital after a fall. Hakeem, who has since renounced crime, had not been at the family home for several days.

Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting, said: "Shakira was awoken by the sound of gunfire. Within seconds she heard someone trying to open her locked door and the door was forced open.

"She saw a male wearing a green army jacket with a scarf covering his face below the eyes. She hid under her duvet terrified. She did not move until she heard Michael gasping for breath. She went into his room. There was blood coming from his back and bullet holes in the wall. She dialled 999."

A few hours later, Noor was laughing at a TV news report of the murder after turning up drunk at the Ipswich home of a female witness. He laughed when she said the killers must be sick and said: "My boy did the job. The boy was in the bedroom upstairs sleeping but we didn't want the boy, we wanted the brother.

"My boy was terrified and just shot the boy. I was watching in the car outside and I told my boy to go in and do the business."

He said his cousin had fired the gun and then went back to Somalia.

Firearms discharge residue was found on Noor's clothing and his DNA was on a casing of one of the bullets fired from the gun, which had been converted from firing blanks to live ammunition and could fire 1,200 rounds a minute.

Both men claimed they were at home or near home at the time of the killing and had alibis.

Michael was a regular at the Celestial Church of Christ close to his home. He attended St Michael's Secondary School in Bermondsey and had celebrated his 15th birthday just a few days before his death. The catalyst for the violence was a robbery on 3 February, when the gang snatched £18,000 from a security guard making a cash collection from Tesco Express in Penge High Street.

Within minutes the robbers had fallen out among themselves over the division of the spoils.

The cash had been taken to the home of gang boss Orando Madden, now 25, in Peckham and a younger faction, including student Javarie Crighton, 21, was convinced Madden had denied them a fair share of the money.

Crighton, who was on bail on drugs charges, Sannoh and Noor confronted Madden outside his home but the boss pulled out a knife and fatally stabbed the student through the heart. Sannoh and Noor then went out for revenge.

Madden was convicted of murder at the Old Bailey in December and jailed for life.

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME, WEEPS DRUG-DEALING BROTHER

THE former drug dealer brother of Michael Dosunmu told the court: "It should have been me."

Shocked by the murder of his younger brother, Hakeem Dosunmu has renounced crime and wept in the dock as he told the court that he has to live with the fact that his brother's killers got the wrong man.

Once a Sunday School teacher, Hakeem's life descended into drug dealing and gangsterism before he found redemption after his brother's death. He went downhill soon after returning from five years in the Army, serving in Basra with 32 Engineers during the invasion of Iraq and later in Bosnia.

Although well-regarded by officers, he was court-martialled over an assault.

Returning to civilian life in London, he struggled to hold down a job, fell in with the security van robbery gang and dealt in cocaine and ecstasy. But after the killing he turned his back on his criminal friends, confessed to his crimes and gave evidence against the men who murdered his brother. Dosunmu, 26, also helped secure the conviction of former friend Orando Madden for the murder of Javarie Crighton, which prompted the gun attack on his home.

At the Old Bailey, a judge reduced Dosunmu's possible five-year term for his part in robberies to two years after hearing how he blamed himself for his brother's death, pleaded guilty and helped the police.