Stabbed to death for turning up the telly too loud
RACKET NEIGHBOURS CLASHED OVER NOISE Killer sentenced to life
A KNIFEMAN who stabbed a neighbour to death over TV noise has been jailed for at least 18 years.
Thomas Sellar, 38, hid a kitchen knife behind his back to confront 23-year-old Jamie Walsh in their common stairwell after complaining for days about the noise from his flat.
He was given a mandatory life term yesterday when he appeared for
sentence at the High Court in Edinburgh.
During his trial, he claimed he had acted in self-defence because Jamie and other youths had attacked him. But he was convicted of murder.
The trial was told that Sellar, who had six previous convictions for knife possession and assault, plunged the knife into his own body after stabbing Jamie.
He told police he had been stabbed himself in a bid to escape justice.
But they uncovered enough evidence to show Sellar had been lying about what had happened.
Passing sentence, Lord Ericht told Sellar he would have to serve at least 18 years before he would be eligible for parole.
He added: “It is because of your actions that Jamie Walsh is dead and it is because of your actions that the family of Jamie Walsh have lost a loved one.”
The court was also told that the killer wrote a play when he was 19 called Dead Boys Tales, which dealt with the problems Greenock teenagers had in staying away from drugs and crime.
It was performed in his home town in 1997 with an amateur cast of young people struggling with drug addictions.
Defence advocate Herbert Kerrigan QC told the court that Sellar did not heed the message in his own work, as was shown by his record.
Kerrigan added: “He did not carry out the intentions of the play, which was to divorce himself from the criminal environment which he had entered into.”
The trial heard Sellar lived in Wren Road in Greenock and Jamie moved into a friend’s flat on the floor below.
On the night Jamie died last September, Sellar had gone to the flat to try to convince the residents to keep the noise down.
But he was chased back to his own flat.
Sellar claimed he felt he had no other option but to grab a knife and in the ensuing chaos, Jamie was injured.
He said: “They chased me down. I couldn’t breathe. I never intended to kill him.”
Jamie’s brother Christopher told jurors that his brother didn’t do anything wrong.
When prosecution lawyer Stewart Ronnie asked him if Jamie attacked Sellar with a knife, he said: “Jamie didn’t have a knife. He (Sellar) did it himself. He was trying to get a defence.”
Nicky Patrick, procurator fiscal for homicide and major crime, said: “It is clear that Thomas Sellar chose to arm himself and confront his victim with the purpose of doing him serious harm.”
He armed himself with the purpose of doing serious harm FISCAL