A man has been jailed for life for stabbing to death a security guard who came to evict him from his Birmingham flat due to unpaid rent.
Chad Henderson will serve a minimum of 19 years after being sentenced today (Nov 6) at Birmingham Crown Court for the murder of Nathan Burton. He had been found guilty following a trial which concluded in September.
Henderson refused to attend court for sentencing after sacking his legal team and refusing to participate in the proceedings.
Henderson, aged 46, had stabbed Mr Burton four times in the chest at the address in Woodhurst Road, Moseley, shortly before 11pm on April 7, 2021.
The 27-year-old victim, from Wolverhampton, who was a father to a young daughter, was dragged back down the stairs by his colleagues but collapsed in the street.
He died within hours after being taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.
Henderson, an American national, rang officers to tell them what he had done after the attack saying he had acted in self defence.
Henderson had arrived in the UK in July 2020 and lived in a number of flats before returning to a different property at Woodhurst Road.
He got into thousands of pounds of rent debt but despite appeals by the landlady for him to pay the increasing amount he ignored it until she demanded he move out of the property.
The landlady asked her son to hire a security firm to evict Henderson, with them attending in April 2021. When Mr Burton and his colleagues from the security firm arrived the first time he saw Henderson was in possession of a bottle and lighter giving the impression he was armed with a petrol bomb.
Officers were called and liaised with both parties and Mr Burton and his colleagues were told they required authority from a court to evict Henderson.
They returned later that evening and went upstairs where Henderson had barricaded himself in by wedging a sofa at the top of the stairs. Henderson was waiting for Mr Burton, who was leading the group.
Henderson leaned over the banister and stabbed him four times in the chest, saying: ‘Why are you here? Why are you doing that you know you shouldn’t be here’.
His colleagues pulled Mr Burton down the stairs and into the street but he collapsed very quickly.
Henderson called officers and told the operator ‘I defended myself’. We arrested him at the scene and interviewed him multiple times, where he told us he was putting in measures in place to stop a ‘home invasion.
