Killer snubbed pleas to help his victim and phoned friends instead

A KILLER who launched a “sustained and serious” assault on a pensioner and then ignored pleas to call an ambulance has been ordered to be detained for 10 years.

Drama student Rhys Reynolds, 20, was convicted of manslaughter after a jury was told he made telephone calls to friends rather than summoning help for 72- year- old Tony McCorry.

A jury heard Mr McCorry spent his working life in Birmingham helping the homeless after growing up in a Glasgow orphanage.

Reynolds, of Landswood Close, Kingstanding, was cleared of murder but convicted of unlawful killing following a trial at Birmingham

Crown Court in October. The trial heard Reynolds told one friend Mr McCorry had fallen downstairs and told another he had hit him with an ashtray.

Yesterday, Judge Francis Laird QC said the student had given the appearance of helping the victim back to his home in Boldmere, Sutton Coldfield, after their paths crossed in a pub in December 2019.

Although he accepted jurors had found there was no intention to kill, the judge said the defendant had lied to friends, the police and the court about what happened in Mr McCorry’s home.

The judge told Reynolds, who appeared via a video link from

Brinsford Young Offender Institution in Staffordshire: “Tony McCorry was a loving and loved father, grandfather and brother.

“The court has heard the moving statement of his son, written on behalf of the family, remembering the good times with his father.”

He said no sentence

“could begin to mitigate the devastating loss”. A family victim- impact statement read to the court described Mr McCorry as having an “independent Scottish spirit”.

The statement, written on behalf of his two sons, brother and other family members, said Mr McCorry had “worked with the homeless, as he once was”.