Two gunmen who forced their way into a house in Peckham and murdered an innocent schoolboy while he slept in his bed were jailed for life today with a minimum term of 30 years each.

Michael Dosunmu, 15, was sprayed with bullets from a Mac-10 sub-machine gun as he lay under his duvet in the early hours of February 6, last year. Four bullets hit him in the back, one of them piercing his heart.

His killers, Mohammed Sannoh and Abdi Omar Noor, mistook him for his older brother, Hakeem, who shared his bedroom at the family home in south London. They were seeking revenge after a friend was stabbed to death, and believed that Hakeem had cheated out them of their share of the proceeds in a string of armed robberies.

Sannoh, 19, of Peckham, and Noor, 22, of Camberwell, showed no emotion as they were both jailed for life at the Old Bailey today.

Judge Stephen Kramer told them: “This was a planned and premeditated killing. It was an execution. You both, quite probably acting with another person or others, carried out this killing in an act of revenge.

“Your target was Michael’s older brother, Hakeem. Mistakenly and tragically Michael was killed. It was a death that could only invoke in all right-minded people feelings of outrage, shock and sympathy for Michael’s family.”

Hakeem, a former soldier who fell into a life of crime after serving in Bosnia and Iraq, was at a club dealing drugs when his churchgoing brother was killed. It was Hakeem’s links to a robbery gang and the murder of another of its members that led the gunmen to his door.

In April the 26-year-old was jailed for two years for his part in the security van robberies, although the judge reduced the sentence from a maximum of five years after hearing that he “carries around with him the thought that (Michael's murder) should have been him”.

Michael’s devout Christian family said that they were standing by Hakeem.

His mother, Shakira, went futher, saying that she bore no grudges against the gunmen. She said: “I have forgiven them from the bottom of my heart. They must reform their lives and then good luck to them.”

The family said Michael’s murder had been like “stabbing us in the heart”.

His father, Rasak, said: “Michael was hard-working and did his homework after school. He was level-headed and the type of boy every parent would want to have. He always came home with good grades and was very popular among his friends. He died with unfulfilled dreams.”

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