JUSTICE FOR RHYS JONES

 

Rhys 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:

• 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.