Teenager gets life for killing his tormentor
19-year-old snapped after years of ‘Tommy Tucker’ taunts
A BULLIED schoolboy was jailed for life yesterday for battering to death a friend who had tormented him for years. Tommy Kimpton, 19, beat Ben Williams repeatedly around the head with a pool cue in his bedroom before attempting suicide.
He was sentenced for manslaughter after after a jury cleared him of murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He will be eligible for parole within two and a half years.
Kimpton claimed he snapped after enduring taunts since the age of five about his weight, glasses, big ears, arched feet and lack of success with girls.
He was nicknamed ‘four eyes’, ‘fat boy’ and ‘Dumbo ears’. He claimed Ben was responsible for daubing the words ‘Tommy Tucker You Big Fat F*****’ on a railway bridge.
Kimpton had known his victim since childhood but was always the subject of teasing in their group of friends.
He finally snapped one night in May last year when he invited 17year- old Ben to his house after a night out drinking.
The attack was so violent that blood was found on a wall 9ft away from the body.
During his trial at Truro Crown Court, Kimpton told the jury that although Ben bullied him constantly, he wanted to be just like him – popular, good- looking and athletic.
Kimpton said: ‘I didn’t look the same as everyone else at school – I was always very different. ‘ I was overweight and had to wear thick glasses, and I had big ears and goofy teeth. I never liked the way I looked and I was never good at running because I had arched feet.
‘Everyone found it funny. I didn’t want to be myself any more, but I just tried to deal with it because I wanted to be part of the group.
‘ Ben was different – everybody liked him. He was good at sport, he was funny and I wanted to be like him.
‘ When we were on our own he was brilliant. He would let me talk about my problems – but as soon as we were in a group he would put me down.’
Sentencing, Judge Graham Cottle
told him: ‘ You needlessly
took the life of a young man whose whole life was in front of him.’
Outside court, Ben’s family denied that he had been Kimpton’s main tormentor and claimed the issue of bullying had been ‘ blown out of all proportion’.
Parents Hayley Williams and Jeremy Underwood said in a statement: ‘ Ben was certainly not a ringleader in the “mickey taking” and in fact had been a victim of bullying himself over the years.
‘It seems to have been forgotten that actually he was a defenceless victim of a prolonged and vicious attack.
‘We believe he should have been found guilty of murder and given the appropriate sentence.’ On the night of the killing, on May 20 last year, Kimpton had gone out with Ben and other friends to a pub in Penryn, Cornwall.
They spent the night teasing Kimpton, telling him he was too fat and laughing at his darkrimmed glasses, the court heard.
At the end of the night, Kimpton invited Ben back to the house in Penryn where he lived with his mother, Pauline.
As the pair sat in Kimpton’s bedroom listening to music, the bullied teenager – fuelled by alcohol – smashed the cue over his friend’s head 12 times with what was said to be ‘very considerable force’.
The following morning Kimpton was found slumped unconscious next to an open bottle of vodka and packets of drugs. He spent two days in hospital before being arrested.