A white man who hacked to death a young Asian man, provoking an armed brawl between the races on the streets of an estate in Preston, has been jailed for eight years.

Liam McKerney, 21, was found not guilty of murdering Shezan Umarji, 20, by a jury at Preston Crown Court but was convicted of his manslaughter after a trial that lasted two months.

Last July, McKerney chased the young Asian man and stabbed him 14 times. Mr Umarji’s jugular vein was cut in the attack, and he was stabbed in the heart. As Mr Umarji lay bleeding to death outside a parade of shops on the Callon estate, his killer was heard to shout “Paki bastards” and “You black bastards”.

As the news of his death spread, white and Asian men clashed in a violent confrontation. William Waldron, QC, for the prosecution, told the jury: “When police combed the area in the hours that followed, it is a sorry fact that they found weapon upon weapon discarded on the streets, in bins and under bushes. In a city not noted for racial unrest, the events of the early hours of July 22, 2006, stand as a shameful stain.”

The court was told that Mr Umarji was no innocent bystander but a participant in the night’s events, who would possibly have faced criminal charges had he lived. However, he did not deserve to die.

Earlier in the evening, he and another Asian man had attacked McKerney, his younger brother and another man with a wooden bat or bottle as a result of a “mindless dispute”. They had pursued the three men to the McKerney family home, where they kicked down the door.

The jury was told that the father of the McKerney brothers had seen that his sons were rummaging in the cutlery drawer and were arming themselves. He told them, “Don’t be silly” as they left the house.

Mr Waldron said that the three men, all armed with one or two knives, had chased after the two Asians. “Theirs was an unspoken but plain and well-understood common enterprise: to inflict as much serious harm on their target as they possibly could, to the point of murder,” he said.

McKerney shared the dock with his brother Kieran, 18, and Lee Moore, 20, who were cleared of murder and manslaughter.

Mr Waldron had said that it was inescapable that race had played its part in the proceedings but Judge Anthony Russell, QC, the Recorder of Preston, insisted that it had not been a racially motivated offence.

Judge Russell told McKerney: “Whatever Shezan Umarji had done in the past and that night, he did not deserve to be hacked to death on the streets of Preston by you and possibly others. It was a brutal and vicious attack. Violence of this kind on the streets will not be tolerated.”

Speaking outside court, Detective Chief Superintendent Graham Gardner said: “In anybody’s book this was a tragic and senseless killing of a young man on the streets of Preston. This stands as a fine example of how antisocial behaviour mixed with alcohol abuse can accelerate from low-level disorder to extreme violence.

“This has been a difficult inquiry and I am grateful to members of the Callon community who felt able to give evidence of what they saw on this very sad night. As one might expect, this has been an extremely traumatic 18 months or so for the Umarji family. They have supported police throughout all stages of the investigation.”

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