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Chelsea O’Mahoney, 14, told David Morley, 37, a gay bar manager who had survived the Admiral Duncan pub nail bombing in Soho, to “pose for the camera” before she took pictures on her mobile of her friends attacking him. Then she kicked him in the head herself.
The barely literate girl was named at the Old Bailey by the Common Serjeant of London, Brian Barker, who lifted an order banning identification when he jailed the four killers.
The girl was sentenced to eight years and the three men 12 years each for their part in an all-night orgy of violence around the South Bank in London. The gang staged five attacks on eight people within a few hours, capturing the assaults on camera to laugh over the clips later. The four were told they would each have to serve at least two thirds of their sentences before being released on licence.
There were angry scenes inside and outside court after the sentencing. In court a relative of one of the three men shouted insults and outside court police had to intervene when friends of the gang made throat cutting gestures at Mr Morley’s father and shouted abuse.
The girl, now 16, had been in care and then fostered after her mother abandoned her.
Anthony Berry, QC, for the defence, told the court: “Both of her parents were heroin addicts. At the age of three or four, she was to see her mother injecting herself with heroin.” She had been found wandering the streets of London in the middle of the night, completely unsupervised, when aged just three or four.
In her diary she wrote of an earlier attack: “Yesterday I done an allniter wiv Barry, Darren and Reece. It was joke aswell we went (?) places. Them lot bang up some old homeless man which I fink his badmire (?) even doe I woz laughen after doe.” The judge told her: “Your life has lacked stability, consistency and effective boundaries and emotional care.”
Reece Sargeant, 21, Darren Case, 18, and David Blenman, 17, from Kennington, South London, were acquitted of murder last month but found guilty of manslaughter and conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm.
The judge said the gang had become obsessed with catching people unawares, assaulting them and filming the scene. He said: “You called this ‘happy slapping’ — no victim on the receiving end would dignify it with such a deceptive description. No one listening to this case could fail to have been affected by your selfishness and blindness to the suffering of others. You sought enjoyment from humiliation and pleasure from the infliction of pain.”
Mr Morley and his friend Alastair Whiteside had been chatting by the Thames when they were attacked on October 30, 2004. Mr Whiteside, who was himself badly beaten, told the court that he saw a girl run up and kick Mr Morley: “She kicked him like you would kick a football or rugby ball, just swinging her right foot back and kicking him really hard in the head.”
All the attacks took place along the South Bank theatre complex around Waterloo and Hungerford Bridge.Mr Morley had been working at the Admiral Duncan in Old Compton Street when it was bombed in 1999. “He survived that only to die in this,” said Richard Horwell, prosecuting.
After the trial, Mr Morley’s father Geoffrey, 76, said he was pleased the sentence reflected the seriousness of the offence but sad that he had seen little evidence of remorse. “At least it will be better for the public at large and perhaps better for them that they have a sentence that fits the crime,” he said.
Tarique Ghaffur, the Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner, said he remained “deeply disappointed” that the conviction was not for murder.
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