How a Broken System Led to Harvey Willgoose’s Death.
On February 3rd, 2025, tragedy struck during lunch at All Saints Catholic High School in Sheffield. Fifteen year old Harvey Willgoose was fatally stabbed by another pupil.
That pupil, Mohammad Umar Khan, also 15, was already known to staff for dangerous behaviour—including bringing knives into school and showing them off to other students. The school’s response was shockingly inadequate.
Before enrolling at All Saints, Mohammad had already been expelled from another school for assaulting a fellow pupil. He had been at All Saints for only 15 weeks.
Harvey’s mother, Mrs Willgoose, says she holds the school responsible for not acting sooner. “I blame them. I blame them more than him,” she said. “There were so many flags.”
After serving a suspension, Mohammad returned to school. Following an argument online with another boy that Harvey defended, he would confront Harvey and stab him twice.
Mohammad is no outsider. He was born and raised in Sheffield. Teachers knew he’d been bullied for a medical condition, and that his home life was violent and unstable.
Teachers, social workers and education authorities were all aware of his situation, yet no one intervened in a meaningful way. The support he desperately needed never came and the danger he posed to himself and others was left to grow unchecked.
In August, Mohammad was sentenced to 16 years in prison for Harvey’s murder. Two families destroyed—one grieving a son who’ll never come home, the other forced to face the truth that their child’s pain turned fatal, that their neglect and abuse shaped their child into a killer.
Everyone saw the signs. Everyone sensed something wasn’t right. Yet no one stepped in with the amount of care or courage that it would have taken to change his course.
The system failed Mohammad—and in doing so, it failed Harvey. One boy’s pain was ignored until it took another boys life, leaving not one but two families to live with the wreckage.
