Boy, 16, locked up for 24 years after bid to kill pal like video game hitman
A TEENAGER who shot a 15-year-old boy in the face with a doublebarrelled shotgun as he walked to school has been sentenced to 24 years in custody for his attempted murder.
Jacob Talbot-Lummis, 16 – obsessed with guns and violent computer games – “ruthlessly executed” a plan to attack his long-time friend.
The victim had been walking to school in Kesgrave, near Ipswich, for the first day back after the original lockdown when he was shot from less than 5ft away.
A court heard that Talbot-Lummis drove his father’s car to lie in wait for more than an hour before shooting the boy with the Beretta gun on September 7 last year. He had taken the firearm from his grandad’s house.
The vengeful teenager can be named after Judge Martyn Levett yesterday lifted a reporting restriction banning his identification.
The judge said he caused the victim “unimaginably serious injuries”. The younger boy has flashbacks and continues to be “reliant on his family”.
Ipswich Crown Court heard that Talbot-Lummis, of Martlesham, played a virtual reality game called Blood Trail the day before.
A friend said it was “hyper-realistic in its violence” and that TalbotLummis “adores it”.
Described by makers as the “most violent game in VR”, it centres around a contract killer massacring a cult using an arsenal of weapons.
Judge Levett said: “You had an obsession with all types of lethal firearms and were entrenched in watching violent video games.” He told the court Talbot-Lummis had played computer games “obsessively” since he was nine, “in a virtual world more suitable for 18-year-olds”.
The defendant said he had wanted to “scare” the boy who he accused of causing him “humiliation and fear” – and claimed he fired unintentionally.
But jurors rejected his account and found him guilty of attempted murder.
Judge Levett said Talbot-Lummis did not report his bullying claims, adding: “I don’t accept there was bullying of the scale or the degree suggested.”
He also pointed out the defendant had a “haul” of lawful BB guns, a type of air weapon, adding: “If you wanted to scare [the victim] you could have used one of your own authenticlooking guns.”
At an earlier hearing the court heard that Talbot-Lummis had made a series of chilling remarks while he was being detained. They included him saying he would “probably kill again” if he could leave the secure unit.
On being asked what he would like to do later in life, he said: “I’ll probably be inside until I’m 40. I would like to be famous for chemical warfare.”
The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said the trauma of being shot by someone he had been friends with since primary school had destroyed his dream of becoming a medic. He said: “I wanted to be able to help others. A job such as a physiotherapist or member of the emergency services. I dreamed of that since I learned about my grandfather being a fire captain. Due to my injuries I’m no longer going to be able to do this, which breaks my heart.”
His mum said in a statement TalbotLummis was “evil, full of hatred” and that their “world was shattered”.
The defendant was also convicted of two shotgun possession charges.
Judge Levett said he had the “protection of the public in mind” as he imposed the extended 24-year term with five years on licence.
TO SOME it is a massive scar on the landscape, to others a vital project to drive Britain’s economy.
These drone shots show tunnelling for HS2 is set to start under Long Itchington Wood, Warwickshire, as part of phase one of the £100billion high-speed rail line between Birmingham and London.
Huge progress has been made over the summer months, as these images show, with the line cutting across the countryside towards Birmingham.
Next up is digging a mile-long tunnel under the ancient woodland, which is over 400 years old and a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
A tunnel boring machine (TBM) – nicknamed Dorothy, after Dorothy Hodgkin who in 1964 became the first British woman to win a Nobel Prize for chemistry – is being used.
TBM Dorothy weighs 2,000 tons, is 125 metres long and will work non-stop 24 hours a day, seven days a week .... at a blistering pace of 15 metres per day.
A one-mile-long tunnel will be dug first, with work then starting on a second once, to the left of the original. Each will take around five months.