Small boat migrant Haybe Cabdiraxmaan Nur, 47, has been jailed at Derby Crown Court for life with a minimum term of 25 years for stabbing a bank customer to death in the city in May.

Nur – a Somalian national – was staying in Home Office accommodation in Derbyshire at the time of the attack, having paid £400 to enter the UK illegally a few months earlier. On May 6, he entered the Lloyds Bank as Gurvinder Singh Johal, 37, was standing in a queue “going about his everyday business”. The Shelton Lock Hen and Chickens Bar and Grill restaurant owner, known to friends as Danny, was speaking to a friend on FaceTime when Nur entered and stabbed him in the chest with a knife. He pleaded “why” and “what the f***” as Nur walked out of the bank barely 30 seconds later. It has now been revealed that the migrant was appealing against a Home Office refusal to grant his asylum at the time of the killing.

Nur has now been jailed for life with a minimum of 25 years after he pleaded guilty to murder. 

Judge Shaun Smith KC said: “It was a real-life horror film for everyone connected to Mr Johal and everyone who had the misfortune of witnessing your wicked act.”

Three weeks before the murder, Nur smashed a window in an electrical repair shop after he was unable to access Facebook on his phone. Another incident in a bank saw him shout “f*** England” while branding customers “white racists”.

Nur was also “known to the police” in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Luxembourg before he arrived illegally in the UK in September 2024.

On May 6, Nur had called several migrant charities complaining he was “living his life like an animal” and did not feel supported.

“The call continued he became more erratic and at one stage he said he was going to end his own life by walking into traffic,” said Prosecutor Louis Mably KC. “Then he was asked why and he then said he was ‘going to kill 500 people and then kill himself’.”

Later that afternoon, the day of the killing, Nur was sitting on a bench with a half-bottle of vodka in the city centre when Mr Gurvinder walked past. There was “no interaction” between them, but the killer got up and walked into the bank where he stabbed the dad-of-three.

He was later arrested at home while he was intoxicated with half a bottle of vodka in his trousers. Nur told police he had no memory of the killing after drinking three bottles of vodka and 10 beers.

“We stand before you today broken and grieving and the future feels like a lifetime of grief,” said Mr Gurvinder’s family. “He was a rock, a shepherd, our angel on earth and his children say a monster took their daddy away. A home once filled with laughter and his joyful presence is now in suffocated silence so loud it hurts. Every morning we wake up expecting to hear his footsteps but there is only silence.

“The silence screams his absence and the future now feels like a sentence of grief.”

They also branded Nur a “coward and a demon” over the killing. “To the one who did this, we pray God shows you the same mercy you showed our son. May you and your soul never rest in peace,” they added.