Teenager's killers get 30 years

Rasak Dosunmu said the loss of his 15-year-old son - who was sprayed with sub-machinegun fire as he lay asleep in his Peckham home - was like having his "heart ripped out".

He told the court how his son had excelled at school and had extra tuition in maths and science at home.

On his 15th birthday he told his father in hospital that he wanted one day to buy him and his mother Shakira a Ferrari each to repay their love and devotion.

"Michael was a rose, the sunshine and the wind, he was full of life but all our hopes and aspirations of him have been taken away," said Mr Dosunmu in an impact statement read to the court. "The mental and psychological pains which the killers have inflicted on us continues daily.

"When we think of Michael it is like something special is missing from our lives. He was a fun-loving boy, a member of the Sunday school choir, and had the fear of God in his mind at all times. He died with an unfulfilled dream."

Michael was riddled with bullets from a MAC-10 in mistake for his elder brother Hakeem, a local drug dealer. The murder came after 48 hours of violence and killings as gangsters fell out over the proceeds of "cash in transit" robberies of shops and banks across London.

Hakeem - who has now renounced crime and told the court "it should have been me" - was allied with the gang boss who had stabbed to death a friend of the killers.

Mohammed Sannoh, 19, and Abdi Omar Noor, 22, were convicted yesterday of Michael's murder.

Today Judge Stephen Kramer imposed a minimum 30 years on Noor, a Somalian of Camberwell, and Sannoh, of Peckham and originally from Sierre Leone, who will start his sentence in a young offender institution.

Judge Kramer said: "You both, and probably with others, carried out the killing as an act of revenge. Your target was Michael's older brother Hakeem but mistakenly and tragically Michael was killed. It was a death which invokes in all right-minded people feelings of outrage, shock and sympathy for Michael's family."