Parents who caused death of buried Birmingham boy jailed

A couple whose severely malnourished son’s body was found buried in the garden of their former home have been jailed.

Three-year-old Abiyah’s body was found behind a house in Birmingham, nine months after Tai and Naiyahmi Yasharahyalah’s, 42 and 43, had been evicted from the property.

Last week, the pair were were found guilty of causing the death of Abiyah, whose body was found at the house in Clarence Road, Handsworth.

Tai Yasharahyalah was jailed for 24-and-a-half years and Naiyahmi Yasharahyalah was given 19-and-a-half years at Coventry Crown Court on Thursday.

During an eight-week trial, the court heard that the couple lived off grid and created their own bespoke belief system based on a mixture of elements that drew from New Age mysticism and West African religion.

After the death of Abiyah, they kept his body inside their home for eight days, before embalming the body using frankincense and myrrh prior to a ritualistic burial in their garden.

Sentencing, Mr Justice Wall their son died “as a result of your wilful neglect of him.”

He said the three-year-old had a “catalogue of injury and disease” at the time of his death.

The couple heard that the judge believed they both realised how unwell their son was prior to his death.

“I am sure that each of you played a part in starving him and failing to get medical care for him when the need for it was obvious to you,” he said.

“When Abiyah died you did not call an ambulance or seek any medical assistance in the hope that his life could be saved.

“Instead you took his body into the back garden and there buried it.”

During the trial, jurors were told the couple were evicted from their Birmingham home in March 2022 before police found their son’s body in December that year.

After he was exhumed, Abiyah was found to have been in a severely malnourished state and suffered from a list of other health problems at the time of his death.

These included bone fractures, rickets, anaemia, stunted growth and severe dental decay.

Post-mortem tests failed to ascertain the cause of Abiyah’s death, but experts were able to say that if the three-year-old died from a respiratory illness, as described by his parents, the effects of malnutrition would have been a “more than minimal” cause of his death.

Both parents had denied neglect, causing or allowing the death of a child and perverting the course of justice.