LONDON: A girl of 14 with a troubled past has been jailed for eight years for her part in a "happy slapping" attack by a Clockwork Orange-style street gang that killed for kicks.
Chelsea O'Mahoney, 14, told David Morley, 37, a gay bar manager, to "pose for the camera" before she took pictures on her mobile of her friends attacking him. Then she kicked him in the head herself.
The barely literate girl was named at the Old Bailey on Monday by the Common Serjean of London, Brian Barker, who lifted an order banning identification when he jailed the four killers.
There were angry scenes inside and outside the court after the sentencing. In court, a relative of one of the three men shouted insults. Outside court, police had to intervene when friends of the gang made throat-cutting gestures at Morley's father and shouted abuse.
The girl, now 16, had been in care and then fostered after her mother abandoned her.
Anthony Berry QC, for the defence, told the court: "Both of her parents were heroin addicts. At the age of three or four, she was to see her mother injecting herself with heroin." She had been found wandering the streets of London in the middle of the night when aged just three or four.
In her diary, she wrote of an earlier attack: "Yesterday I done an allniter wiv Barry, Darren and Reece. It was joke aswell we went places. Them lot bang up some old homeless man which I fink his badmire (?) even doe I woz laughen after doe."
Sentencing her to eight years over Morley's death, the judge said: "Your life has lacked stability, consistency and effective boundaries and emotional care."
In an all-night orgy of violence around the South Bank in London reminiscent of scenes in the ultra-violent 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, the feral gang staged five attacks on eight people to capture them on camera and laugh over the clips later.
Reece Sargeant, 21, Darren Case, 18, and David Blenman, 17, each received 12-year sentences.
The four, all from Kennington, South London, were acquitted of murder last month but found guilty of manslaughter and conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm.
The judge said the gang had become obsessed with catching people unawares, assaulting them and filming the scene.
He said: "You called this 'happy slapping' - no victim on the receiving end would dignify it with such a deceptive description. No one listening to this case could fail to have been affected by your selfishness and blindness to the suffering of others. You sought enjoyment from humiliation and pleasure from the infliction of pain."
The four stood impassively as they were told they would each have to serve at least two-thirds of their sentences before being released on licence.
Morley and his friend Alastair Whiteside had been chatting by the Thames when they were attacked on October 30, 2004.
Mr Whiteside, who was also badly beaten, told the court that he saw a girl run up and kick Morley: "She kicked him like you would kick a football or rugby ball, just swinging her right foot back and kicking him really hard in the head."
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur said he was "deeply disappointed" the conviction was not for murder.
Chelsea O'Mahoney, 14, told David Morley, 37, a gay bar manager, to "pose for the camera" before she took pictures on her mobile of her friends attacking him. Then she kicked him in the head herself.
The barely literate girl was named at the Old Bailey on Monday by the Common Serjean of London, Brian Barker, who lifted an order banning identification when he jailed the four killers.
There were angry scenes inside and outside the court after the sentencing. In court, a relative of one of the three men shouted insults. Outside court, police had to intervene when friends of the gang made throat-cutting gestures at Morley's father and shouted abuse.
The girl, now 16, had been in care and then fostered after her mother abandoned her.
Anthony Berry QC, for the defence, told the court: "Both of her parents were heroin addicts. At the age of three or four, she was to see her mother injecting herself with heroin." She had been found wandering the streets of London in the middle of the night when aged just three or four.
In her diary, she wrote of an earlier attack: "Yesterday I done an allniter wiv Barry, Darren and Reece. It was joke aswell we went places. Them lot bang up some old homeless man which I fink his badmire (?) even doe I woz laughen after doe."
Sentencing her to eight years over Morley's death, the judge said: "Your life has lacked stability, consistency and effective boundaries and emotional care."
In an all-night orgy of violence around the South Bank in London reminiscent of scenes in the ultra-violent 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, the feral gang staged five attacks on eight people to capture them on camera and laugh over the clips later.
Reece Sargeant, 21, Darren Case, 18, and David Blenman, 17, each received 12-year sentences.
The four, all from Kennington, South London, were acquitted of murder last month but found guilty of manslaughter and conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm.
The judge said the gang had become obsessed with catching people unawares, assaulting them and filming the scene.
He said: "You called this 'happy slapping' - no victim on the receiving end would dignify it with such a deceptive description. No one listening to this case could fail to have been affected by your selfishness and blindness to the suffering of others. You sought enjoyment from humiliation and pleasure from the infliction of pain."
The four stood impassively as they were told they would each have to serve at least two-thirds of their sentences before being released on licence.
Morley and his friend Alastair Whiteside had been chatting by the Thames when they were attacked on October 30, 2004.
Mr Whiteside, who was also badly beaten, told the court that he saw a girl run up and kick Morley: "She kicked him like you would kick a football or rugby ball, just swinging her right foot back and kicking him really hard in the head."
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur said he was "deeply disappointed" the conviction was not for murder.
