Ten years for cricket bat boy, 16, who killed a dad as he hunted bike thieves
A BOY of 16 who battered a man to death with a cricket bat after he looked for his stepchildren’s stolen bikes was locked up for ten years yesterday.
Jimmy Owens crept up behind Derek Whyteside and killed him with a single blow to the head – on the day he left secondary school.
Mr Whyteside, 42, who was armed with a knuckle duster, had been trying to locate the bicycles belonging to the children of his partner Michelle Beddall.
Vicious
He fell to the ground and was then attacked by Owens’s father. He suffered a fractured skull and died in hospital 36 hours after the assault in Telford, Shropshire, on June 18.
Judge Paul Glenn lifted a ban on naming Owens as he jailed him for at least ten years.
He said he accepted that Owens did not intend to kill when he hit Mr Whyteside. “You emerged from the bushes and struck him from behind with the bat,” he told him. “You aimed at his head. You used significant force. He had no chance to take evasive action – it was a vicious blow delivered in anger.”
William Owens, the boy’s father, admitted affray and was jailed for 20 months. Sentencing him, Judge Glenn said: “Your part was, frankly, outrageous. Your involvement and the effect on the community is so serious only custody is appropriate.”
The judge said Australian-born Mr Whyteside had “decided to go and look for those who he considered to be involved” in the theft of the bikes and was “plainly ready for trouble”.
He said he had “demons” involving alcohol and drugs. Mr Whyteside had behaved badly on the day in question but paid a “terrible and totally unjustified price”, the judge said.
He also condemned “despicable” mobile phone pictures of the victim taken before he was put in the recovery position, although he praised the efforts of Owens’s mother to help the injured man.
The judge also accepted that Owens had not stolen the bikes but said the catastrophic events could have been avoided if he had done “the decent thing” and helped to recover them.
Owens was found guilty of murder at Stafford Crown Court.
Patrick Harrington, QC, defending, said the youth had previously been chased by Mr Whyteside and that provocation had played a role in the attack.
Hell
“The court may feel that this was a 16-year-old boy who left school that day with aspirations and ambition and did nothing wrong to cause the trouble that came to him,” he said.
But in a victim impact statement, Ms Beddall said: “I am having to go through living hell because they acted like animals and can’t face up to what they have done. I hate what they have done to me and my kids.”