Judge: Murder victim’s partner blameless

♦ A judge implored the partner of an insurance executive murdered in a botched robbery not to blame himself after he pressed a panic alarm that triggered the shooting.

Mr Justice Jay yesterday jailed two drug addicts for 34 years for the murder of Guy Hedger, 61, during what he described as an “amateurish and incompetent” burglary.

Simon-pierre Hedger-cooper, 48, could only watch helplessly as his husband was fatally shot in the chest at point-blank range after he activated an alarm during the raid at their £1million home in a Dorset village.

Winchester Crown Court heard that Jason Baccus, 42, and Kevin Downton, 40, broke into the couple’s home as they slept upstairs. The pair, one armed with the shotgun, forced the terrified men to lie on the floor as they stole designer goods worth £125,000.

When Mr Hedger-cooper hit a concealed panic alarm, his partner was shot and bled to death while waiting for an ambulance at their home in Castlewood, near Ringwood, Hants.