Caught on CCTV, mum waiting in vain to collect teenage daughter... and killer who’d just strangled her
A GRIEVING mother has described the moment a killer looked her ‘straight in the eyes’ minutes after he had murdered her daughter.
Lewis Haines strangled 18-year-old Lily Sullivan after the pair had met in a club on a night out.
Her mother Anna Sullivan was anxiously waiting in her car to pick Lily up when she unknowingly spotted Haines walking home after the attack – with the moment being caught on CCTV.
Haines had tried to force himself on the teenager, who rebuffed his sexual advances, a court heard.
The 31-year-old then removed her top before strangling her and leaving her body in Mill Pond, Pembrokeshire.
The father-of-one was jailed for a minimum of 23 years and four months for murder yesterday at Swansea Crown Court.
Mrs Sullivan said: ‘I picture the man responsible for her death when I saw him at the garage, and I wish
I had confronted him. Knowing I was that close to her, I wish I’d got out of my car and walked. I always wonder if I could have saved her.
‘He looked me straight in the eyes knowing what he had done.
‘I feel now that this was Lily trying to tell me something and reaching out to me, which is unbearable.’ The court heard Lily was born after Mrs Sullivan miscarried 14 times, and that their bond was ‘sisterly’.
Lily and her killer met at the Out nightclub on December 16 last year where they kissed, and later went to a nearby alleyway together.
But the teenager did not want sex with him and phoned her mother, saying: ‘I’ll be there now... I’m on my way... I’m nearly there.’
In a victim impact statement read to the court, Mrs Sullivan added: ‘ I question what happened when her phone went dead when I was speaking to her, what I could have done differently so she’d still be alive.
‘I play that whole night over and over in my head – it’s like being tortured thinking just one decision could have changed the whole night. These thoughts never leave me and I can’t stop thinking about it.’
Judge Paul Thomas QC concluded that Haines became ‘frustrated’ and killed Lily before dumping her body and making his way home, past his victim’s mother.
The court heard scaffolder Haines later confessed to the killing. He told his mother he attacked Lily after she threatened to accuse him of being a rapist when she found out he had a girlfriend, and that his young daughter – who he was trying to get regular access to – would be ashamed.
Sentencing Haines who had pleaded guilty, Judge Thomas said: ‘ You strangled her face-toface, she must have been terrified. She was entirely at your mercy and you, Lewis Haines, showed her none.
‘You were entirely thinking about your own self-preservation.’
Mrs Sullivan added: ‘I think the person responsible will have taken advantage of the fact Lily would have seen she was in danger – the danger she was in – and this was exploited by pure evil.’
Members of Lily’s family shouted ‘ monster’ and ‘ rot in hell’ as Haines was sentenced.