A Somalian national, described by authorities across four countries as “wicked,” has been convicted of the random murder of a restaurant owner in Derby after his asylum request was denied, a court has been told.

Haybe Cabdiraxmaan Nur, 47, attacked Gurvinder Singh Johal, a 37-year-old father of three, by fatally stabbing him in the chest at a Lloyds Bank branch. After the incident, he reportedly walked out of the bank with composure. Nur admitted to the murder in August.

Gurvinder Singh Johal, affectionately called Danny by friends, resided in West Bromwich with his wife and their young children, aged five, three, and one. He was also a businessman, owning several ventures, including the Hen and Chickens Bar and Grill in Shelton Lock.

Sentencing Nur to life imprisonment with at least 25 years behind bars, Judge Shaun Smith KC condemned the act as “brutal and callous.” He noted that Johal was simply at the bank to withdraw money to pay his employees when he was killed.

Judge Smith described the CCTV footage of the incident as akin to a “real-life horror film” for Johal’s family and those who witnessed the crime. He emphasized the public nature of the attack and mentioned that Nur’s deportation would be determined by the Home Office.

Prosecutor Louis Mably KC informed the court that Nur had entered the UK via a small boat on October 22, 2024. Just four days later, his asylum application was rejected on the grounds that 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.

Chilling CCTV played at 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.

The court heard that Nur 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 b*******’ 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 –  the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy and Germany – in the years before he arrived in the UK, after being arrested for a variety of offences.

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 prosecutor 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.

The police watchdog has confirmed it conducted an investigation into Derbyshire Police’s handling of the report from the migrant charity, but said it would not be able to release its findings until the conclusion of the inquest into Mr Johal’s death.

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 at 2.52pm, where he was then attended to just four minutes later 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, having drunk three bottles of vodka.  

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 – their 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.’

A spokesman for the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said: ‘Following a conduct referral from the force we independently investigated phone contact Derbyshire Constabulary received in relation to Haybe Cabdiraxmaan Nur shortly before Mr Johal’s death.

‘The investigation was completed earlier this month when we shared our findings with Derbyshire Constabulary and Mr Johal’s family. To avoid any potential for prejudice, we will publish our findings at the conclusion of all related proceedings, including the inquest.’