(Benjamin Katabana. Punch News)
A 28-year-old Congolese man, Benjamin Katabana, has been convicted of murdering Nigerian student Uchenna Okirie, who was fatally stabbed at a shared residential building in Norwich, England.
A jury at Norwich Crown Court returned the murder verdict after an 11-day trial, rejecting Katabana’s defence of diminished responsibility, which his legal team had linked to a traumatic childhood in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
He had admitted manslaughter on those grounds but denied the murder charge.
Okirie, a former postgraduate student at the University of East Anglia, was attacked in the early hours of November 22, 2025, at Somerleyton House off Unthank Road. Emergency responders were called at around 5:22 a.m. following reports of a stabbing, but Okirie was pronounced dead at 6:01 a.m. from a single stab wound to the chest.
CCTV footage from the building proved central to the prosecution’s case.
The footage showed Okirie using his mobile phone in a communal corridor when Katabana already armed with a knife launched what investigators described as a sustained and brutal assault, stabbing him multiple times and kicking him in the head before leaving him face down on the floor.
Senior investigating officer Alix Wright described the attack as deliberate and unprovoked, revealing that Katabana had lured Okirie into the corridor via WhatsApp messages, having already armed himself beforehand.
Katabana turned himself in to police shortly after the attack, reportedly telling officers he believed he had killed someone.
He later answered “no comment” to questions during formal interviews. The murder weapon was never recovered.
A sentencing date is yet to be set by the court.
Following the incident, the Nigerian community in Norwich launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds to repatriate Okirie’s remains to his family.