A GANG of youths who kicked a bar manager to death during one of their regular rampages of violence were convicted of manslaughter yesterday.

But the 14-year-old girl and three youths who kicked David Morley’s head like a football and filmed the attack on their mobile phones were cleared of murder. Mr Morley, a survivor of the Admiral Duncan pub bombing, was one of eight people savagely assaulted by the group in an hour-long rampage of indiscriminate “happy slapping” attacks last October.

The teenage girl had approached Mr Morley, 37, who was sitting with a friend Alastair Whiteside on London’s South Bank, pointed her mobile phone camera at him and said: “We’re doing a documentary on happy slapping. Pose for the camera.” After her friends had beaten him to the ground, she then kicked Mr Morley in the head two or three times, according to Mr Whiteside. A post-mortem examination likened his injuries to those suffered by a car crash victim or someone who had fallen from a great height.

The Old Bailey jurors heard that gang members regularly went on what they described as “all-nighters”, alcohol-fuelled rampages in which they hunted for vulnerable people to assault. Police said that they were motivated only by thrill-seeking and violence for its own sake. Police had treated the incidents as homophobic as Mr Morley was well known within the gay community.

Homosexual rights groups criticised the manslaughter verdicts and said that his attackers should have been convicted of murder. The judge, who has called for background reports on the defendants, may rule it was a homophobic attack when he sentences them next month.

Peter Tatchell, of OutRage!, said: “David’s killing resulted from a premeditated attack. They must have known that their violence was likely to cause serious and potentially fatal injuries. The manslaughter verdict for the killing of David Morley contrasts with the murder verdict for the killer of Liverpool teenager Anthony Walker.”

The killers, Darren Case, 18, Reece Sargeant, 21, and a 17-year-old boy and the 14-year-old girl, neither of whom can be named because of their age, showed no emotion as the verdicts were read at the Old Bailey. The four, all from Kennington, South London, were also convicted of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm and remanded in custody until sentencing. The attacks, on October 30 last year, were described in court as “random, indiscriminate violence for what can only have been pleasure”. Some victims are still recovering from their injuries. The attacks were reminiscent of the murder of Timothy Baxter, a law student, in 1999. He was beaten unconscious and thrown into the Thames from a bridge. Mr Baxter and his friend Gabriel Cornish had been mugged by a gang on their way home from a party. Mr Baxter drowned; Mr Cornish survived but has been traumatised ever since.

After he had been assaulted at about 3am, Mr Morley was taken to St Thomas’ Hospital but died in intensive care. He had suffered injuries, including five fractured ribs, and died as a result of a haemorrhage from his ruptured spleen.

Sargeant, who worked by day as a volunteer in a charity shop, was the ringleader of what he called the Sargeant Crew. They roamed the streets of South London with their mobile phones, recording beatings, robbery and graffiti.

Afterwards they joked and boasted about the attacks. One member kept 26 stolen mobile phones in his bedroom as trophies of the attacks. While awaiting trial, Case was said to have boasted: “I’m a murderer. David Morley, that dickhead, that’s the one I killed.”

Mr Morley, from Chiswick, West London, was assistant manager of the Admiral Duncan in Soho, where three people died in the April 1999 bombing by neo-Nazi David Copeland. He had suffered burns, permanent hearing loss and mental trauma but gave away a lot of his compensation money to others whom he thought deserved it. Mr Morley’s elderly parents, Jeff and Doreen Morley, paid tribute outside court to their adopted son. They said: “He was a wonderful son. He had a talent for making people happy.”

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