A Ugandan court sentenced a man to death Thursday for the stabbing murders of four children at a nursery school in Kampala — a crime the judge described as the calculated slaughter of toddlers by a man who arrived prepared, acted without hesitation and left without remorse.

Christopher Okello Onyum was convicted of fatally stabbing four children aged between one and three years old on April 2 at the nursery school, which he entered by posing as a parent. Once inside, he locked the gate behind him. The attack lasted less than seven minutes.

The court heard that before the killings, Onyum had searched “schools near me” and “ISIS beheadings” on his mobile phone and laptop — digital preparation that the judge cited as evidence of deliberate, advance planning. The defense argued he had been suffering from insanity at the time. The judge rejected that claim, pointing to what he described as the “accurate and precise manner” of the killings as proof of premeditation. The children, the judge said, were slaughtered “like animals.”

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A staff member at the nursery described the moment she discovered one of the victims in a “pool of blood” and then confronted the attacker. “He got up and had a knife in his hand. He was so quick that he immediately grabbed another child,” she testified. She threw a child’s bicycle at him to force him to release the child, then fled. “I ran, but later fell. When I got up, I realized he had cut the second child,” she said.

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Onyum did not apologize to the parents of the children he killed. The judge said the absence of remorse weighed in her sentencing decision. An angry crowd of parents had attempted to lynch him at the scene before a security guard intervened and subdued him ahead of police arrival.

Capital punishment is legal in Uganda but has been applied rarely in practice, with the country’s last confirmed execution carried out more than 20 years ago. Whether Thursday’s sentence is ever carried out will depend on the appeals process and the Ugandan government’s posture on executions — but the sentence itself was the court’s unambiguous statement about what four children’s lives were worth, and what the man who took them deserves.