He was a star player of the Fir Tree under-12s football team and a season-ticket holder at Everton.
He was walking home around 7:30 p.m. from football practice on 22nd August last year and cut across the parking lot of the Fir-Tree pub in his hometown of Liverpool.
A shot went off.
He died in his mother’s arms as she wept over his limp body.
He was buried in a blue coffin adorned with the badge of his beloved team Everton, with more than 2,500 mourners attending, many of them dressed in Everton colours.
The Everton team also paid tribute to him in August 2007:
The trial, which was put off several times, finally began on the 9th October this year.
Two months and a week later, a teenager by the name of Sean Mercer has been sentenced to a minimum of 22 years in prison for Rhys’ murder, states the Guardian today.
‘Mindless, indiscriminate violence’ of gang warfare
Mercer, of the Croxteth gang, had been aiming at a Strand gang-member when Rhys walked into the line of fire.
The Times quotes prosecuting attorney Neil Flewitt on the first day of the trial: “It was the presence of those young men that brought Sean Mercer to The Fir-Tree pub and it was at two of those young men that Sean Mercer was shooting when he killed Rhys Jones.
“The murder of Rhys Jones was yet another, and even more tragic, example of the mindless and indiscriminate violence that is a feature of the rivalry between the Croxteth Crew and the Strand Gang.”
In February this year, a member of the public responded to a police appeal and reported the discovery of the abandoned mountain bike. Mercer’s DNA was on it.
Mercer was also captured on CCTV footage of the pub, though because he was hooded it was unable to identify him.
The prosecution also presented evidence gained by tapped lines in the houses of the boys involved.
The police also uncovered the gun at the house of one of the gang members involved.
‘No discipline, no training, no honour’ and ‘terribly immature’
Today, BBC quotes the judge Justice Irwin as he sentenced Mercer: “”You are not soldiers. You have no discipline, no training, no honour.
“You do not command respect. You may think you do, because you cannot tell the difference between respect and fear.
“You are selfish, shallow criminals, remarkable only by the danger you pose to others.
“Rhys Jones’s life is gone. We do not take a life for a life, although even if you are released, you will be under licence and supervised for as long as you live.”
Richard Pratt, Mercer’s defense lawyer, is reported by the Liverpool Echo to have said that his client’s “maintained denial” of the murder signified that he could not do much to mitigate the circumstances apart from the fact that Mercer’s age of 16 at the time of the fact rendered him and his friends “terribly, terrible immature”.
The Guardian also reports facts that emerge now, of which the jurors were unaware during the trial:
Two months before the shooting, Mercer rode a motorcycle past members of the public on rival gang territory
Weeks after shooting Rhys, Mercer was given a three-year Asbo for terrorising security guards at a sports centre
Other gang members that assisted Mercer were also convicted, with two boys Kays and Coy being sentenced for seven years for helping Mercer to cover the crime. Further sentencing for other members is yet to take place, reports the Times.
Justice at last
The BBC reports that Stephen Jones, Rhys’ father, expressed his thanks to Liverpool and the rest of the nation: ”From the day Rhys died the kindness shown to us by the people of Liverpool has been immeasurable.
“For this we will always thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Over the months we have found strength in the messages of support from many thousands of strangers around the world.
“For us as a family today is not the final chapter of the tragedy. But at least now we can begin the challenge of rebuilding our lives. Thank you all very much.”
Here’s to Rhys Jones, the nation’s son — one of too many that is gone too soon.
This happened last year but I was thinking of it recently when we were approaching “Investigative Journalism” as part of my Masters degree and talked about door-stepping, and also when we had to do a test on journalism ethics.
All the BBC Editorial Guidelines, Ofcom, whatnot, agree on the points of media sensitivity for the people being filmed (not to cause undue stress) and the people portrayed by the person being filmed (to be fair and accurate) and for the people watching the footage (some things are not appropriate for broadcast TV).
I’m sure American companies have similar rules and guidelines — possibly even stricter ones in some cases.
And I thought back to what happened last year, and wondered… was this whole incident really necessary?
Trinidadian verbally attacks Fox reporter
The background story: a Trinidadian was allegedly involved in a terrorist attack.
So, whoop-de-dah, Fox News sends their journalists to Port-of-Spain to hunt down his family and friends to get the story.
This is what ensued:
It’s funny because he curses the reporter, and even funnier because America, land of the free and home of the brave (and no cursing on the evening news) played it.
Forward-thinking but backward-moving
But it also did three other things:
(1) it made the suspect look guilty because his family member did not want to talk about him
(2) it made Trinidadians look like savages: the man screams “Yuh wah meh mash up dis ah wat, ah now tell yuh ah doh want to be on TV… wat d muddercunt does wrong wit allyuh?”
(3) it portrayed Trinidadians as backward and uneducated, with his pronunciation of “film” as “flim” (which even educated people often say in Trinidad as a slang word)
I know for a fact that this incident has happened many times over — people not wanting to be filmed, especially in Trinidad where there seems to be an innate fear of “being on camera”, and it is common to curse news reporters that do not respect this wish.
No self-respecting news channel in Trinidad would play this footage of the man cursing.
Fox News did.
At the time it happened, some of my friends were laughing hysterically.
I cringed.
How can my country move forward when we are always portrayed as so backward?
What gives us the right?
The man, who is calm and soft-spoken at the beginning, agreed to an interview, and the journalists betrayed his trust and filmed him anyway.
And then played the footage of him getting agitated (which would happen to anyone, I can imagine, if they were put in such a position).
It makes you think about “investigative journalism”, about what journalists do and about whether or not our hearts are in the right place when we go with our noses to the ground to sniff out a story.
What gives us the right to lie to people, and what gave Fox the right to show this footage?
I was browsing WordPress blogs (I have quite a few friends who’ve been directing me to their blogs ever since I joined the Blogosphere) and came across a post one of my friends had commented on, entitled “Trinidad tops the world in porn searches”.
Interesting, I thought. Do tell.
Trinidad tops the world in porn-related searches
Trinidad & Tobago, apparently, according to Google, the holy grail of search engines and crunching numbers (all those little bots scattering around in cyberspace), tops the world in porn-related searches.
I kid you not, or as the blogger put under the photo : I shit you not.
So I tried the Google Insights function Beta search myself, filtering it for “2004-present”, then “last 7 days”, “last 30 days”, “last 90 days”, “last 12 months”, “2007″, “2006″, “2005″, “2004″…
When I finally ran out of selectable options, I burst out laughing.
But it’s not funny.
In terms of volume of searches through Google for porn and measured against population, a country with an estimated population of only 1.3 million, a tiny Caribbean island that most of the world never heard of — or perhaps only learnt about after Football World Cup 2006, or 2008 Beijing Olympics — tops the world, repeatedly, in porn-related searches.
…But what do the numbers mean?
This means that a person in Trinidad is more likely than a person anywhere else in the world to be searching Google for porn.
Not that all Trinis are searching for porn, but that the number of porn searches relative to the population is the highest.
(Perhaps several horny teenagers are diligently searching for it every day, causing the numbers to sky-rocket. But let’s assume not.)
Tops the WORLD. Not the Caribbean region, not the English-speaking/Anglophone Caribbean, not the West Indies, not the Lesser Antilles, not the CARICOM countries, not any of those groups we tend to fall under depending on who is broadly sweeping us into their calculations.
We are way ahead of the US (the top producer of porn), the UK (former Daddy Empire: the source of our colonisation), Jamaica (the country that the world broadly thinks signifies all of the Caribbean), South Africa, Kenya, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand… I mean, you name it.
And all of these countries have several times our population, some of them have more than 100 times our population.
Granted, the numbers are measured against population — but percentage-wise, porn is searched for the most in Trinidad.
Funny, yes, but also sad.
We can laugh at the facts for days on end, but it’s a serious thing.
Porn searches = sex crimes?
With Trinidad’s rate of HIV/AIDS infection; the ridiculous lack of sex-education I recall from my childhood (see previous post on SEX, SEX & MORE SEX: TNT & WORLD AIDS DAY 2008); and numerous rape and sex-related crimes being reported every day in the news (let’s not even go into those that AREN’T reported)…
…No, it really isn’t funny.
The reason behind it — well we’d have to do a bit of investigative journalism to find that out.
Maybe the lack of local porn available sends Trinis to the net to look for foreign porn (whilst in other countries it is easier to just pick up a video), maybe there is a research project about porn taking place in Trinidad, maybe young people are using it as a form of sex-education?
One would hope.
And not that porn-searches automatically link to sex-crimes, but you have to admit that these facets of our society do not exist in a vacuum!
3 facts to bear in mind:
As the Express reported less than a week ago, though Parliament approved the Notification Requirement for Sex Offenders, the law designed to protect the public by publicising the identities and whereabouts through a Sex Offenders Registry remains “inoperable, useless and in urgent need of repair”.
Trinidad & Tobago’s rate of HIV/AIDS infection is 1.5%, the fourth highest in the region.
Statistics from the Rape Crisis Society, discussed in an Express article earlier this year in June, indicate that there has been a dramatic increase in (reported) cases of sexual abuse/molestation of children under the age of 15 in 2007.
“Ah give him bread and ham, together with a pastelle,
Ginger-beer, ponche-a-crème and sorrel
A glass of local wine went to his head;
He turned to me and said:
‘Oh yes, Trini Christmas is de best’…”
-Susan Maicoo, “Trini Christmas Is De Best”-(c.1980s)
“Santa leave the North Pole and come down to Trinidad
He say it too cold in the North Pole[…]
Soca Santa don’t want to ride no sleigh[…]
Santa walking around in sneakers and jersey and jeans
Looking to see where have party
And he tryin’ to storm, coz that is de norm
He come out to play, so he feting Trinidadian way…”
-Machel Montano, “Soca Santa”-(1990)
Two weeks and two days to Christmas, and this “Trini gone foreign” is feeling it.
This year is the fourth year I will be missing a “Trini Christmas”.
Trini Christmas is distinct from Christmas all the world round, and I think it’s worth explaining what it’s all about.
Trinidad is best known for its Carnival, but whilst Carnival is widely promoted as engendering national unity, many Trinidadians consider it immoral and do not partake in such activities.
It is Christmas that unmistakably functions as a unifying ‘national’ event that merges the entire gamut of ‘Trinidadian’ heterogeneity.
Except for the more fundamentalist churches that regard Christmas as a secular abomination, most religions including Hinduism and Islam celebrate Christmas with a passion analogous to Christians.
Trini Christmas food and music
As Maicoo’s song suggests, ‘Trini’ Christmas is the creation of something magnificent from the traces of other things:
‘Ponche-de-crème’ is French, ‘pastelle’ is of Spanish origin, ginger-beer is of English origin, ham is a popular food worldwide, and ‘sorrel’ is distinctly Caribbean.
Similarly, Montano’s ‘Soca Santa’ alludes to an ‘alternative’ Christmas from the romanticized American ideal of a ‘white Christmas’, with mistletoe, holly, chestnuts, pine trees and roasting marshmallows on an indoor fireplace.
‘Soca Santa’ is fed up of the Americanised Christmas and comes to Trinidad, ditching his reindeer-sleigh and red-and-white suit, “looking to storm party[…] feting in the Trinidadian way”.
Trini Christmas emerges from slavery
As Mathura says, when Trinidad was a Spanish colony and Trinidadians were forced to be “mimic-men” the European planters were pining for a ‘white Christmas’ and began to ‘import’ Christmas, using cotton to decorate their trees and importing fruits.
By the time slavery was abolished, the freed slaves, indentured labourers and planters’ descendants had begun to follow suit with “imitation Christmases”.
Christmas trees were made out of big branches or dyed-green broomsticks with red cellophane covering the bristles, stuck in a tin of sand with cotton-wool around the tin; with “imitation holly, berries, strawberries, bells and baubles[…] hung on the homemade trees”.
Christmas became the time of year to put out their best crockery.
Even in modern years of considerable affluence, there is a Trinidadian deviation from ‘giving presents’ to ‘dressing’ the home: “it is the house[…] which is the main recipient of Christmas shopping” as Daniel Miller says in his book Modernity: An Ethnographic Approach: Dualism And Mass Consumption In Trinidad.
Though gifts are certainly exchanged between family and friends they are usually small tokens of affection because the family spends the entire year saving to invest in redecorating/refurnishing the house at Christmas.
Developing a unique ‘Trini Christmas’
However, as Mathura points out, with increasing affluence, much of Trinidad has “succumbed to the consumerism that only America [can] afford”, a “brand of cultural penetration [that] brings with it more dissatisfaction than goodwill”
Nevertheless, as Mathura explains, the traditions adapted from European settlers and integrated with Trinidadian reality have created a unique ‘Trini Christmas’:
“Without realising it, with traditions like gathering stones and pitch-oil to boil the salty ham, the Christmas curry, our blushing poinsettia, parang in the breezy Paramin hills, Soca Santa, pungent sorrel flowers, we re-created ourselves in our own mould, did the impossible by jogging an almost-erased memory in order to reclaim ourselves.
With our humble tools of paint and tinsel, song, varnish and linoleum, we breathed sharing, resilience, tolerance, exuberance, love, and faith into the cotton-wool snow that skirted our trees.”
Diasporic Trini Christmas
Even diasporic migrants acknowledge their ‘Trini’ obligations.
Though she feels like a “stranger in a strange land” and the extent of her Christmas gathering is her sister and their cats; Trinidadian journalist Jarrette still ‘put[s] away’ the house: “We have to send pictures back home and you can’t have the place looking rusty”.
On Christmas Day, for her the phone is “the real Santa Claus”: relatives calling from home with “the background filled with parang and glasses clinking, a bottle and spoon somewhere in the din” bring nostalgic bittersweet memories
Jarrette mentions the difficulties of celebrating ‘Trini’ Christmas abroad: apart from going through “one set of hasikara” and ending up “compromising” with many Jamaican replacements because she lives far from West Indian markets, the American host country is often not welcoming:
“Management informed us that [our ornaments] had to be taken down immediately[…] we were only allowed to stick things on our door that do not exceed the size of a photograph”.
Nevertheless, she notes with a smile that after neighbours called the police because they were playing their ‘voodoo-music’ [parang] too loudly, “the officers ended up leaving our apartment with ham sandwiches and sorrel”
Though Trinidad Carnival is labelled the epitome of ‘globalization in reverse’ due to its exporting of a ‘Carnival diaspora’ as Trinidadians carry their culture abroad to generate offspring of Carnival, Christmas also wields significant power as a source of ‘Trini’ identification.
As the lights go down, his adrenaline amplifies, careening around every corner of his body till his skin is as taut as the guitar strings he begins to run his fingers across.
“I never get nervous,” says Alex Lipinski with a quick grin. “When I get up there, it just flows.”
Westminster student wins MBF award
The 21-year-old second-year Commercial Music student at the University of Westminster recently collected a £2000 Musicians’ Benevolent Fund [MBF] Songwriting Award.
Alex, who hails from Weston-super-Mare in South-West England, has been playing the guitar for ten years and piano and harmonica for over five years, and writes his own music.
“I come from a very musical family,” he says.
He is the youngest of four, with a sister and two brothers whose musical talents include guitar, piano, harmonica, saxophone, flute and singing.
He performs with his older brother Adam at gigs in London and the South-West, and Adam also performs on Alex’s self-titled debut album, which he has just finished recording.
Lipinski: alternative country, Americana, folk, Ryan Adams, Jeff Buckley
His musical style – which he labels as a mélange of alternative country, Americana, folk and melodic indie music – is inspired by the likes of The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Rufus Wainwright, Ray Lamontagne, Bob Dylan, Crowded House, Bruce Springsteen and Ryan Adams.
He certainly looks a bit like Ryan Adams, shaking his long hair out of his face as he leans back in the chair to think about his next answer to my questions.
But his voice is sweeter, more reminiscent of Jeff Buckley, particularly when he croons the ballads “When Will I Be Home” and “Goodbye Lullaby”, but then all likeness to either musician disappears when he breaks into his more up-tempo “Lonesome Train” and “I Think You Know”.
Lipinski: ‘talent but no soul’ in shows like The X-factor
He leans forward, now armed with a response: “I don’t see myself ever selling out and going on TV shows like The X-factor.
“They aren’t looking for talent, they’re looking for a brand image that would make good TV. It’s hard to take it seriously when Danii Minogue and Cheryl Cole are telling you whether or not you can sing.
“These shows simply ridicule what music is – you can see through most of those acts.
“There may be talent, but there’s no soul there.”
‘Soul’ certainly contributed to winning the MBF award.
MBF: Music charity focuses on educating young musicians
His university lecturer Helen Reddington had sent him the information about the MBF Awards, which are open to all students on pop and commercial music degrees music at universities and colleges throughout the UK.
Each university chooses one artiste before their choices are sent to a national judging panel, chaired by three-time Grammy-Award nominee Joan Armatrading MBE, which then selects six finalists to perform at The Bedford.
The MBF is the largest music-business charity in the UK, spending over £2 million each year in helping around 1,500 people of any age and in any area of the music business, with a particular focus on the role of education in encouraging the next generation of young musicians.
From Commercial Music degree to MBF award
“My degree at Westminster has helped me in understanding the production and the business element of the industry, which is essential when it comes to dealing with issues such as contracts, publishing and other elements – so you don’t get exploited,” says Alex.
“I also applied for LIPA [Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts] and even though Liverpool is one of the most magical cities in the UK… personally, I think I made the right choice by locating to London, because there’s so much going on here and the heart of the industry is also here.”
A five-piece band, Fables, from LIPA won the MBF Songwriting Award at the event, and will be using their award to cover the costs of recording, promoting and touring.
Alex will apply his Peter Whittingham MBF award primarily to his showcase in New York City, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia in April 2009.
But for now, he is dedicating his focus to his showcase on January 23rd, when he will perform at the 12 Bar Club on Denmark Street in London – only a few buildings down from where the Rolling Stones recorded their first album at Regent Sound Studios in the 1960s.
Lipinski’s inspirational advice for upcoming artistes: ‘the nucleus’
As he continues to develop his talent, the singer-songwriter has inspirational advice for upcoming artistes.
“Be true to yourself and concentrate on developing yourself.
“If the song is good, everything else falls into place. A good song is the nucleus of everything.”
“Nucleus?” I laugh.
A biological word, perhaps, and one you would not expect to leap out of a young musician within the space of a half-hour interview, but a scientific approach – learning as much as you can, picking apart things from the seams to discover how they work, tinkering with the intricacies of the craft… well, not bad advice.
“Yes,” he repeats, with conviction this time, and coupled with the amicable grin again.
“Nucleus.”
—
[Alex Lipinski will be performing at 12 Bar Club with his band on Friday 23rd January 2009. For more information on the gig and the forthcoming debut album, visit the following websites: www.alexlipinski.com & www.myspace.com/alexlipinski]
As World Aids Day 2008 draws to a close, the Caribbean’s future with the deadly disease looks none too promising.
According to the UN’s 2008 report on the global AIDS epidemic, the Caribbean, with 1.1% of the adult population infected, has a higher prevalence of AIDS that any other area of the world except sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2007, stated the UN report, around 20,000 became infected with HIV in the Caribbean, with 14,000 reported AIDS deaths and an estimated 230,000 living with HIV and AIDS.
Trinidad & Tobago’s rate stands at 1.5%, which is the fourth highest in the region after Jamaica at 1.6%, Haiti at 2.2%, and the Bahamas at 3%.
Trinidad: Sex-Ed? What Sex-Ed?
One of the main factors in Trinidad’s high rate is its lack of sexual education.
During my personal experience growing up in Trinidad, I can recall exactly two “sex-education” sessions.
One was in Form 1, when they separated boy and girls into two rooms and talked about periods and (I assume) erections and nocturnal ejaculations to the respective sexes.
I went home with a pack of free sanitary napkins, and no clue about sexual intercourse.
The other was in Form 6, though younger forms were invited – only girls were called to the main Hall over the PA system – where they once more talked about periods and menstrual health.
I went home with a pack of free sanitary napkins, one individually-wrapped tampon, and even less clue about sexual intercourse – though at this point I was 16 years old, which was significantly older than the average rate for being sexually active.
·The average age of first sexual intercourse is 14
·25% of youth have had sex before the age of 12
·6½% had their first sexual experience by the age of 10
·75% had sexual intercourse by the age of 16
…And, I reiterate, the only reference to sex that day at my “sex-ed” session when they handed out sanitary supplies was when they told us: “If you are a virgin – which, of course, I know or would hope you all are – then you should not use the tampons with maximum absorbency.”
‘Young People First’ Programme confronts anal & lesbian sex
Thankfully, things seem to be moving forward from that point.
As the Trinidad Express reports, the current trend is sexual experimentation from children just entering high school, particularly with anal sex and lesbian sex.
“Young people… believe that by having [anal and lesbian] sex… they would be able to maintain their virginity, not realizing that [it] increases the risk of HIV significantly,” said Oscar Ochoa, director of the Government’s Population Programme at a HIV/AIDS seminar held at Naparima Bowl, San Fernando in South Trinidad last Friday.
“Many claim that by having sex with a female partner they will not contract the AIDS virus neither will they become pregnant,” Ochoa continued, but as he pointed out, sex toys could become the vehicle for contracting the virus.
The social stigma of condoms
The problem is that young people just don’t see themselves vulnerable to the disease.
Wearing condoms is still highly stigmatized throughout the Caribbean.
A CAREC study, discussed by Inter Press Service [IPS], revealed that though 8 out of 10 respondents aged 15-24 in T&T knew that condom use protects against HIV, less than half of the males and approximately half of the young women reported consistent condom use with casual partners.
Religious organisation oppose ‘anti-abstinence’ condom-vending machines to be introduced in T&T
IPS reported in August 2007 that the Trinidad & Tobago government is looking to purchase condom vending machines as an initiative to deal with the HIV/AIDS virus.
However one of the main problems faced by this new initiative is the opposition from several prominent religious organisations.
The respective leaders of the Muslim organisation Anjuman Sunnat-Ul Jamaat Association [ASJA], the main Hindu organisation Sanatan Charma Maha Sabha [SDMS], the Inter-Religious Organisation [IRO], and the Roman Catholic church all indicated that they would not be supporting this venture because it sent conflicting messages to young people who are otherwise encouraged that sex should only take place during marriage.
JUSTICE FOR RHYS JONES
December 17, 2008Rhys Jones was a football-mad 11-year-old kid.
He was a star player of the Fir Tree under-12s football team and a season-ticket holder at Everton.
He was walking home around 7:30 p.m. from football practice on 22nd August last year and cut across the parking lot of the Fir-Tree pub in his hometown of Liverpool.
A shot went off.
He died in his mother’s arms as she wept over his limp body.
He was buried in a blue coffin adorned with the badge of his beloved team Everton, with more than 2,500 mourners attending, many of them dressed in Everton colours.
The Everton team also paid tribute to him in August 2007:
The trial, which was put off several times, finally began on the 9th October this year.
Two months and a week later, a teenager by the name of Sean Mercer has been sentenced to a minimum of 22 years in prison for Rhys’ murder, states the Guardian today.
‘Mindless, indiscriminate violence’ of gang warfare
Mercer, of the Croxteth gang, had been aiming at a Strand gang-member when Rhys walked into the line of fire.
The Times quotes prosecuting attorney Neil Flewitt on the first day of the trial: “It was the presence of those young men that brought Sean Mercer to The Fir-Tree pub and it was at two of those young men that Sean Mercer was shooting when he killed Rhys Jones.
“The murder of Rhys Jones was yet another, and even more tragic, example of the mindless and indiscriminate violence that is a feature of the rivalry between the Croxteth Crew and the Strand Gang.”
In February this year, a member of the public responded to a police appeal and reported the discovery of the abandoned mountain bike. Mercer’s DNA was on it.
Mercer was also captured on CCTV footage of the pub, though because he was hooded it was unable to identify him.
The prosecution also presented evidence gained by tapped lines in the houses of the boys involved.
The police also uncovered the gun at the house of one of the gang members involved.
‘No discipline, no training, no honour’ and ‘terribly immature’
Today, BBC quotes the judge Justice Irwin as he sentenced Mercer: “”You are not soldiers. You have no discipline, no training, no honour.
“You do not command respect. You may think you do, because you cannot tell the difference between respect and fear.
“You are selfish, shallow criminals, remarkable only by the danger you pose to others.
“Rhys Jones’s life is gone. We do not take a life for a life, although even if you are released, you will be under licence and supervised for as long as you live.”
Richard Pratt, Mercer’s defense lawyer, is reported by the Liverpool Echo to have said that his client’s “maintained denial” of the murder signified that he could not do much to mitigate the circumstances apart from the fact that Mercer’s age of 16 at the time of the fact rendered him and his friends “terribly, terrible immature”.
The Guardian also reports facts that emerge now, of which the jurors were unaware during the trial:
Other gang members that assisted Mercer were also convicted, with two boys Kays and Coy being sentenced for seven years for helping Mercer to cover the crime. Further sentencing for other members is yet to take place, reports the Times.
Justice at last
The BBC reports that Stephen Jones, Rhys’ father, expressed his thanks to Liverpool and the rest of the nation: ”From the day Rhys died the kindness shown to us by the people of Liverpool has been immeasurable.
“For this we will always thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Over the months we have found strength in the messages of support from many thousands of strangers around the world.
“For us as a family today is not the final chapter of the tragedy. But at least now we can begin the challenge of rebuilding our lives. Thank you all very much.”
Here’s to Rhys Jones, the nation’s son — one of too many that is gone too soon.
Posted in Commentary | Tagged croxteth gang, justice irwin, neil flewitt, Rhys Jones, richard pratt, sean mercer, stephen jones, strand gang | 1 Comment »