An asylum seeker has been found guilty of murdering a hotel worker at a train station in the West Midlands.
Deng Chol Majek was caught on CCTV following Rhiannon Skye Whyte from the Park Inn hotel, in Walsall, where she worked, to the nearby Bescot Stadium station.
She was stabbed in the head with a screwdriver 19 times, and 23 times in total, on 20 October last year.
Rhiannon Skye Whyte. Pic: Family handout/PA
Majek, who is from Sudan and claims to be 19 years old, had told Wolverhampton Crown Court he was at the hotel for asylum seekers at the time the 27-year-old was attacked.
He said he had never spoken to her during the three months he lived at the hotel.
Answering questions from defence KC Gurdeep Garcha through an interpreter, who translated his replies, Majek said he “never had a problem with anyone” at the hotel and had never noticed Ms Whyte while he was staying there.
Asked by Mr Garcha if he was at the train station when Ms Whyte was stabbed, Majek replied: “No.”
He also denied being “responsible for that fatal assault” on the platform.
Asked where he was at the time of the attack, he said: “I was staying in the hotel, outside.”
He also claimed he had never had an argument with Ms Whyte and said there were no issues between them.
Majek said he had spent time in Libya, Italy and Germany before arriving in the UK to claim asylum in July last year.
‘She was always happy’
Rhiannon’s sister, Alex Whyte, said her sibling “always wanted to make everyone else around her happy”.
She said: “Rhiannon had such a quirky personality. You would hear her before you’d see her.
“No matter what her day had been, she always wanted to make everyone else around her happy. She always prioritised family. That was the most important thing to Rhiannon. Obviously, she has a brother and three sisters. And my mum, who was her best friend.”
She added: “Rhiannon is the second youngest. But our baby sister would always say ‘I’m your big little sister’, because Rhiannon was very soft.
“So, no matter what, we always wanted to protect her. That was our priority most of our life, because Rhiannon never saw danger – Rhiannon never understood how scary the world really could be.
“But no matter what Rhiannon was just happy, always.”
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