One-punch killer, 17, gets just four years

A TEENAGER killed a charity worker with a single punch in a ‘senseless attack’ after he did not give him a cigarette.

Luke Woods, 17, was high on drink and drugs when he knocked out Len Saunders, 65, in broad daylight.

Woods, who was caught on CCTV ‘laughing and yawning’ immediately after the attack, was sentenced yesterday to four years and four months in a young offenders’ institute.

The judge said he would have given the teen a longer sentence had the law allowed. Mr Saunders’ family said the attack was ‘monstrous’ and no sentence could compensate for their loss.

Mr Saunders, a former children’s nurse, had been walking home with his friend Gregory Taylor at around 6.40pm on July 21 this year when they met Woods and another teenager, 15, Liverpool Crown Court heard. Drunken thug: Luke Woods Woods, who had drunk a bottle of vodka, told his friend he would ask a stranger for a cigarette and ‘hit him’ if he refused.

Peter Hussey, prosecuting, said Mr Saunders and Mr Taylor replied that they didn’t smoke, adding: ‘Without warning or provocation, the defendant delivered a sudden blow into the face of Mr Saunders.

‘The boy described it as needless and vicious. Nobody present saw it coming. Mr Saunders was felled instantly, falling straight backwards ... The back of his head struck the road with a sound Mr Taylor described as horrific and upsetting and the 15-year-old as loud and scary.

‘The blow appeared to have knocked out Mr Saunders on his feet, even before his head landed on the ground.’

Mr Saunders died nine days after the attack in St Helens, Merseyside. A post-mortem found he died of blunt force head injury. He also had a broken nose and ribs. Woods, of St Helens, who ran off after the attack, was arrested in bed six hours later and admitted what he had done.

He pleaded guilty to manslaughter, which was accepted by the prosecution on the grounds that he had not intended to kill.

Sentencing him, Judge Clement Goldstone, QC, the Recorder of Liverpool, said he had ‘snuffed out’ the life of a man who was a ‘shining yet modest star’ in his local community.

Mr Saunders’ niece Heba Soliman said: ‘We will never forgive or forget the actions of the person that did this. He took away our beloved Len’s life in the most evil and vicious way.

‘The sentence will never be enough. We hope Woods’ actions will be shown for what they are – wicked and cruel.’

Mr Saunders volunteered with charities caring for those with cancer and learning and physical disabilities. He also worked with environmental groups to clean up the local countryside and was active in the town’s arts scene.

Ann Shacklady- Smith, who runs a community cinema that Mr Saunders volunteered at, said: ‘Len touched people’s lives whether they had known him for 50 years or five minutes.

‘We wish to place on record the enormity of the loss that has been caused by this senseless act of violence that has stolen from us all a man of great integrity and humanity.’

‘The sentence will never be enough’