A serial asylum seeker has been jailed after pleading guilty to offences relating to him entering a school premises while carrying items including petrol, a hand axe, and a seven-inch knife.
A judge at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester in England jailed 21-year-old South Sudanese migrant Douk Deng to two years in prison — with “up to” one year to be served actually in jail — after he approached at least two schools, allegedly over his frustration at the failure of the British government to give him asylum status.
Deng, who applied and was rejected for asylum in the United Kingdom three times after leaving his wife and children behind in South Sudan was arrested on August 6th 2025 in the vicinity of Edgar Wood Academy in Heywood, Greater Manchester. The school was closed for the summer holidays and no children were on site, but a party of workmen at the school became concerned by Deng’s behaviour as he started walking around the school and they called the police.
Police bodyworn camera footage shows the moment when officers ordered Deng to get on the ground before tackling the armed man. He was found to be carrying a seven-inch knife, a hammer, a hatchet or hand axe, and a jerry can of petrol.
Once down, Deng can be heard wailing. Earlier in court proceedings, Deng was assessed for mental health issues and found competent, and he pleaded guilty to what Police said in a statement were “two counts each of criminal damage, possession of an offensive weapon in a public place, and on school premises, and one count each of possession of a bladed article in a public place, and on a school premises.”
The court heard that before Deng was reported to police by the builders at the school, other members of the public observed the man behaving strangely while carrying the petrol and the hammer and made reports, and that he’d also approached another school the day before, vandalising its door intercom.
Deng’s defence lawyer told the court he actually meant no harm and intended to hurt nobody, and that by visiting local schools while armed her client actually intended only to cause a “scene” to get the attention of the British government, who he felt had let him down by rejecting his asylum application. The Daily Telegraph reports the lawyer said:
He wanted attention and he was in crisis, but he was not motivated by hostility towards children, teachers or the wider public. There is no evidence that he threatened any individual.
…He found himself in a foreign country with very limited English and unable to work because of his immigration status. He believed and felt that no-one was listening to him and no-one was helping him.
The judge also made reference to his having been denied refugee status in her sentencing remarks. In comments that seemed to betray nothing of a view on whether the failed asylum seeker should be deported or not, Judge Bernadette Baxter said:
I have no power to order the Home Office to do anything.
But in my judgment, given your circumstances as a failed asylum seeker who has been in custody for the best part of a year, the Home Office should be doing something rather than nothing to deal with your status in this country.
The government has previously promised to deport foreign offenders sentenced to 12 months or more in jail.
Deng was sentenced to two years in jail, with half in custody and the remainder on licence, which is to say released back onto the streets but with conditions to obey on pain of being returned to jail. Given Deng has already, as expressed by the judge, been behind bars for almost a year since his August 2025 arrest, the sentence means it is possible he will be released from prison almost immediately.
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