Teen killer Hassan Sentamu threatened a fellow prisoner as he awaited trial for killing Elianne Andam, saying: “Do you want to end up like her, six feet under?”
Hassan Sentamu, 18, stabbed Elianne in the neck as she waited for a bus to school with her friends outside a shopping centre in south London in September 2023. Two weeks later Sentamu was involved in an angry altercation with a fellow inmate at Oakhill Secure Training Centre.
The prisoner repeatedly accused him of killing girls, to which he responded: “I’ll do it again. I’ll do it to your mum. Do you want to end up like her, six feet under? I’ll do the same again.” It can now be revealed that Sentamu had a fascination with knives and first brought a blade into school aged just 12.
Sentamu was said to have acted in “white-hot anger” after being “disrespected” by Elianne and his ex in public
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He was born in Uganda in September 2006. His mother moved to the UK when he was three following reported domestic abuse by his father. Sentamu was left to stay in Africa but came to join his mother in the UK when he was five.
When he was 11, he was sent back to Uganda to a boarding school for three months. He claimed he was physically abused there and beaten with a metal pole. Sentamu returned to the UK while still aged 11 after reporting that he fell down the stairs and injured his knee while running away from staff at the school, an injury which required surgery.
He was placed in a UK primary school where he was referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services multiple times following self-harm behaviours, including banging his head against walls and tables and violence to other children “without provocation”.
CCTV showed smiling Elianne taking Sentamu’s bag moments before he pulled a kitchen knife out and stabbed her to death
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Sentamu was shuttled from school to school as his violence continued and he began to show a growing fascination with knives. In Year 7, aged 12, he brought a blade into school following a truancy incident. He produced the knife during a lesson and pointed it at his own chest, telling a teacher that he hated his life and wanted to kill himself before he was disarmed.
Sentamu claimed he brought the knife to school to use in cookery lessons but received a police youth conditional caution for possession of a bladed article. Teachers reported that on one occasion Sentamu arrived at school two hours before it opened without a coat in sub zero temperatures.
His mother denied allegations of neglect and said the teenager was “out of her control”. She said he was often angry and she could not manage his video game addiction. Sentamu reported that his mother had attempted to strangle and beat him and smashed up his games console.
Elianne Andam was “standing up for her friend” when she died but suffered devastating injuries when she was attacked
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In February 2019 a social worker visited Sentamu at home and found him alone with a bag packed by his mother. His mother was contacted and said that social workers should “take him away”, and he was placed into foster care. In 2019 Sentamu threatened another pupil with a knife on a school trip to a farm and was excluded.
He was placed in a pupil referral unit, but his behaviour continued to be disruptive and aggressive, throwing objects, spitting at a member of staff and punching a student in the back of the head. On 27 June 2019 following perceived insults from another student, he took scissors from a staff member’s desk and announced that he was going to stab the student before eventually calming down.
Following the inident, he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. While in foster care at the age of 14, Sentamu drew a picture of a person beheaded with a knife in their side, the court heard. Sentamu’s foster carer reported that he would threaten to harm her cat or chop off its tail when he did not get his way.
Sentamu wore glasses and a suit in the dock and played with fidget toy when he got bored
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After another incident of violence Sentamu was moved to The Write Time special educational needs school. In December 2021 Sentamu was sent from foster care back to the care of his mother, and they lived together in Rowdown Crescent, Croydon.
His school observed he looked “hungry and unkempt” and his academic work nose dived. In 2022 Sentamu’s mother called the police to say he had become angry and covered the walls of his room in washing-up liquid. In 2023 Sentamu ran away in his pyjamas because he was unable to deal with his sister shouting at him.
Family members said he would watch the Lindsay Lohan film ‘Herbie: Fully Loaded’ “over and over again” and would cry if he could not watch it. They said he would struggle to talk to new people and find sarcasm and idioms difficult to understand.
Sentamu would misjudge facial expressions thinking people were angry or joking when they weren’t. His family said he spent 90 per cent of the time on the PlayStation and said he “felt dead” without it.
He had also made comments about the colour of his skin, saying he wished he was white. Sentamu left school with only two GCSEs, a Grade 3 in English and Grade 4 in Maths, and then began studying sports science at college.
Hassan Sentamu, 18, faces life in prison after he was found guilty of murdering Elianne Andam in Croydon, south London, in September 2023
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Metropolitan Police)
He began dating Elianne’s friend and wrote her many love letters. In one, he said she was not his girlfriend but his “wife”. The teenager would get angry with her if she did not text him enough and when she told him had crushes on celebrities.
He would also turn up at her house with cards when she asked him not to, and they broke up a few weeks before Elianne’s killing. Sentamu was regularly smoking cannabis in the weeks before the killing. In a row on the phone, he told her to “shut the f*** up” and Elianne and her friends demanded he apologise in an encounter at the Whitgift Centre; the day before the killing.
The next day he met up with his ex-girlfriend and her friends to exchange belongings, but he brought a knife. When Elianne grabbed the bag from him he chased her, stabbing her four times. The police officer who arrested Sentamu said he was “smiling and joking” and “seemed fascinated by his CS spray and baton”.
At the end of his first interview, he was asked if there was anything he would like to say to Elianne’s family and answered “no”.
Sentamu has been diagnosed with autism and ADHD and has an IQ of 74, which is extremely low. He was not named publicly as Elianne’s killer until his eighteenth birthday in September 2024. Sentamu wore glasses and a suit in the dock. He was allowed to leave court whenever he wanted a break, and regularly did for long periods. He was also allowed a fidget toy to play with in the dock when he got bored.
For mental health support, contact the Samaritans on 116 123, email them at jo@samaritans.org or visit samaritans.org to find your nearest branch