{"id":271933,"date":"2026-01-30T13:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T13:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/271933\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T13:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T13:07:09","slug":"asylum-seeker-sentenced-to-at-least-29-years-for-murdering-hotel-worker-rhiannon-whyte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/271933\/","title":{"rendered":"Asylum seeker sentenced to at least 29 years for murdering hotel worker Rhiannon Whyte"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Who is Deng Majek?published at 11:17 GMT<\/p>\n<p>11:17 GMT<\/p>\n<p>      <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A mugshot of a man with short black hair and wearing a grey jumper, standing against a wall.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/cef0158a-a038-4ed8-857c-896f3ac437d3.jpg.webp.webp\"  width=\"794\" height=\"447\" class=\"ssrcss-egie1y-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image source, BTP<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Deng Majek is a Sudanese asylum seeker who was living at the Park Inn Hotel in Walsall at the time of Rhiannon Whyte&#8217;s death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The court heard that he was from a large family, with seven sisters and three brothers and did not go to school or have any formal education.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The jury was also told he had a daughter in Sudan, who he left behind when he left the country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Majek told his trial in October that he left Sudan, fleeing war, and travelled through Libya, Italy and then Germany.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The jury heard Majek had travelled to the UK on a small boat, arriving on 29 July 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">On documents in Germany, his date of birth was recorded as 1 January 1998, which would make him 27 now, but he told the court that was a mistake due to confusion when he was processed in Italy and claimed he was instead 19.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tests conducted since the trial have confirmed him to be over 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who is Deng Majek?published at 11:17 GMT 11:17 GMT Image source, BTP Deng Majek is a Sudanese asylum&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-271933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}