10 years jail for boxer who killed 20-year-old

THUG ‘WOULD HAVE PUNCHED HIS OWN SHADOW’ THAT NIGHT

AMAN who killed an ‘innocent’ 20-year-old with a single blow and also injured the victim’s cousin has been jailed for 10 years.

Brandon Sillence (left), 25, had been “aggressive and confrontational” moments before he punched Dean Skillin and Dean’s cousin Taylor Lock in quick succession.

A judge told him: “You would have punched your own shadow” that night outside The Waverley Hotel in Bangor on September 19, 2020.

The sentencing hearing at Caernarfon Crown Court on Friday came a day after a jury of six men and six women acquitted Sillence, of Toronnen, Bangor, of murdering Dean. But he had admitted to manslaughter and committing assault causing ABH on Mr Lock.

The judge His Honour Judge Geraint Walters said Sillence had been “aggressive and confrontational” that night.

He would have been “prepared to punch your own shadow”.

Police had already been called to Bangor city centre and were milling in a crowd of around 30 people looking for Covid breaches.

But the judge said Sillence impeded police and pretended to gag at an officer.

“You were playing at being ‘The big I am’ (But) 30 seconds later you extinguished the life of a young man and injured another. You assaulted these two men effectively while surrounded by a number of police officers, not caring at all.”

Sillence had hit Dean so violently that his head had rotated causing a fracture at the top of his spine and a catastrophic brain bleed.

He was brain dead before he hit the ground.

But as first responders desperately tried to perform CPR on the unconscious victim the defendant Sillence showed no surprise.

He merely waited to be arrested.

That made the judge conclude that he intended to cause “significant harm” to both Dean and Mr Lock.

But the judge accepted that Sillence felt “regret” at what happened.

The judge jailed Sillence to 10 years imprisonment for the manslaughter of Dean and one year for assault occasioning actual bodily harm on Mr Lock, to run concurrently to the main sentence.

But he told the family that judges are acutely aware that no sentence will ever reflect the loss of a loved one.

Courts are compelled to follow the guidelines laid out by others.

Speaking after sentencing, Detective Inspector Jon Russell said: “Whilst Sillence was cleared of murder, he took the life of an innocent man, and whilst no sentence will ever bring Dean back, I hope that today’s events provide some small amount of justice to his family.”