Mum went to investigate when she heard a helicopter overhead - what she found will never leave her

As Justina Bobmanuel soaked in the bath, she heard a ‘pop’ drift in from the window. Having never heard a gun being fired before, she had little idea of what it would sound like.

It was only minutes later, when she found her son lying in the street, that she realised the horror of what that ‘pop’ actually was. Moments earlier, her son Zikel had visited her at her home in Openshaw.

March last year was already a sad time for the Bobmanuel family. Justina’s father, Zikel’s grandfather, had recently passed away and they were going through the administrative arrangements which grieving families have to manage following the death of a loved one.

READ MORE: Grieving mum addresses killer in emotional courtroom scenes

After Zikel had left, she went for a bath. She began to fear something was wrong when the unmistakable sound of a helicopter filtered into the bathroom. She got dressed and went to investigate, and saw her 32-year-old son prone on the ground.

The air ambulance had landed and Zikel was being treated by paramedics. But their desperate attempts to save him were in vain.

A conversation she’d had with him minutes earlier, which she’d brushed off at the time, began to gain added meaning. Zikel, a dad-of-four whose youngest child was just six weeks old when he died, had come round to pick up some of his belongings which were stored at his late grandfather’s home nearby.

With his new born baby in tow, Zikel began ‘pacing’ as he spoke with someone on the phone. “It was unusual, I just knew something wasn’t right,” she later recalled in court.

It soon became clear he was speaking with Rumaal Ingram, 36, better known as Marley, his half-brother. The pair, who shared a father, had a ‘tempestuous’ relationship.

Justina heard Zikel had asked someone to clean some trainers, and that he was being asked for ‘extra money on top’. Zikel, who ran the clothing range Vay Vay Apparel, named after one of his children, had bought new trainers since and wasn’t interested in them anymore, she overheard him say.

Even when Zikel told her about threats apparently made by Ingram over the phone, she didn’t take them seriously. She claimed that Ingram had threatened to shoot Zikel in the legs.

“I just turned around and said ‘he wouldn’t’,” she recalled. “His own brother!

“He’s not going to do that. He is probably just mouthing off, your brother wouldn’t do that.”

She advised him to stay inside as a precaution, but after Zikel left she headed for the bathroom. “I didn’t think it was going to happen,” Justina said at court.

“There was a little bit of fear at the back of my mind, just because really I know what type of guy Marley is. I really didn’t think any harm to Zikel was going to happen.” Even after hearing the helicopter, she didn’t fear the worst.

“At this point I just thought Marley had shown the gun and one of my neighbours had called the police,” she said. It was only when she saw with her own eyes her son lay dying on the floor, that the horrific truth hit home.

“I didn’t think my son was going to lose his life over a daft argument,” she said. “You don't bring a gun for somebody for a pair of trainers do you?

“It was a trivial argument, I don’t even know what it’s got to do with Rumaal, the argument had nothing to do with him.” The pair, who shared a father, weren’t exactly the closest of siblings.

They never lived together in the same house growing up, with Ingram the older sibling by around four years. He grew up in Moss Side’s Alexandra Park estate.

“It was up and down but most of the time it was good,” Ingram would later claim of his relationship with Zikel. “When we was good, we was good.”

Ingram said the pair weren’t in regular contact, but would occasionally bump into each other in a nightclub. “We’d dance and have a drink together,” he said.

Ingram maintained that when they had their ‘downs’, it never got physical between them. Zikel had ‘ran into a bit of trouble’ when he was younger, his mum previously told the M.E.N, but had built a life himself and had found his ‘passion’ in his clothing brand.

The brothers’ lives were brought together once again by a man named Emmanuel Onasanya. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Mr Onasanya moved to the UK aged nine or 10 with his mother.

The family originally settled in Tottenham, north London, but came to Manchester in search of a bigger house. His parents split when he was 15, but he had a ‘fairly normal’ childhood, he said.

His mum worked three jobs to keep food on the table, while he and his two sisters got their education. Mr Onasanya attended St Peter’s High School in Levenshulme, before enrolling in a course to study computer games design at Stockport College, and completing a further course in the same subject at Bolton university.

After finding it difficult to obtain a job in that competitive field, he instead found employment as a support worker working with adults with autism. Mr Onasanya later joined the Army reserves, and began training in the Royal Logistics Corps.

But he was left ‘devastated’ after ill-health forced him to leave the Army and restricted his job prospects. He suffered from mental health problems after being unable to find work, and struggling to support his partner and three young children.

It was his next move that brought him into the orbit of Ingram and Zikel. After cleaning a pair of trainers, he posted a video on Snapchat, seemingly content with his work.

When a friend suggested he could make a business out of it, an Instagram account was set up named Manny’s Kicks, named Manny, short for Emmanuel, and Kicks being slang for trainers.

Although it wasn’t a business that would make millions, Mr Onasanya said it helped with his mental health. Ingram, who said he had a ‘large collection’ of trainers, noticed the account and became a regular customer.

In time Zikel also became a customer of Mr Onasanya. It was an order placed by Zikel which caused a row which ended in Ingram shooting him dead in the street.

Zikel handed over five pairs of trainers to Mr Onasanya for them to be cleaned. Mr Onasanya’s usual fee was £25 or £30 per pair, but he agreed to give a discount and charge £20 per pair, due to the bulk order.

He cleaned the trainers, but Mr Onasanya said months went by without any arrangement for them to be handed over and payment to be made.

Two weeks before the killing, Zikel messaged Mr Onasanya 'out of the blue'.

"He wanted to pay the £20 we agreed, but I said to him 'I've had your trainers this long, I've had to store them, you can't have that price anymore',” Mr Onasanya later recalled.

He claimed Zikel became ‘abusive’ before the conversation came to an end. Then on March 25, the row came to a head when the pair exchanged messages again.

Mr Onasanya claimed Zikel was being ‘embarrassing’ in their conversation. He shared a screenshot of some of the exchanges with Rumaal Ingram.

Zikel heard that his half-brother had become involved, and talk of a meeting soon followed. It was arranged that the trio would meet in Openshaw near Zikel’s mother’s home.

Mr Onasanya claimed he asked Ingram to come with him ‘in case Zikel tried anything’. Before Mr Onasanya pulled up in his Ford car in Openshaw, Ingram had armed himself with a gun.

Mr Onasanya maintained he never knew that Ingram was going to attend the meet with a firearm. Zikel was sitting on a wall when he noticed Ingram arriving.

Shortly after, Ingram pulled out the gun and fired. The single bullet hit the road in front of Zikel, but it fragmented and ricocheted from the ground and bounced up, killing him.

At the trial, Ingram claimed it was a warning shot to ‘scare’ Zikel, who he said he feared may be armed. Mr Onasanya was in ‘disbelief’, he said, as Ingram ordered him to get back in the car and drive away.

He later recalled: “I was hysterical, I just kept saying ‘what have you done, that’s your brother!’ He just told me to drive. He still had the gun on him.”

He drove a short distance away before Ingram got out. He was arrested by police in Leeds days later. The gun was never recovered.

Mr Onasanya went back to the scene of the shooting, and bizarrely took a picture of Zikel. Asked why, he maintained it wasn’t done for a ‘bad’ reason. “I don’t know, at that moment I had the impulse, would anyone believe what I am saying right now?

“I knew at some point, this was serious, the police would get involved, to kind of show my side of it.”

He later handed himself in to police, accompanied by a neighbour who was a retired police officer. Mr Onasanya appeared to be shocked when he was arrested on suspicion of murder.

“So I’m under arrest?,” he said at Ashton-under-Lyne police station. “I’m a witness though. I’ve come to do the right thing.”

When the case reached the crown court, prosecutors alleged that Ingram had intended to shoot his half-brother in the legs and therefore cause him serious harm. He admitted manslaughter, but denied murder.

A jury found him not guilty of murder. His barrister said Ingram had brought the gun to 'threaten' and 'deter' Zikel, and that he only made the decision to open fire at the scene. Prosecutors argued that Mr Onasanya, 33, of John Beeley Avenue, Openshaw, had enlisted Ingram’s ‘support and assistance', and claimed he was complicit in the shooting. He denied murder and manslaughter and was found not guilty of both charges.

Today, at Minshull Street Crown Court, Ingram, of Bucklow Avenue, Fallowfield, was sentenced to life in prison, to serve a minimum of 16 years in prison for manslaughter, a crime which has destroyed countless lives.