A British teenager was sentenced to 17 years in prison on Thursday for murdering a man just hours after posting a message on social networking website Facebook that he felt ”like killin some1”.
Leon Craig Ramsden (19) was found guilty by Manchester Crown Court in north-west England of stabbing 31-year-old Paul Gilligan at a bar in Bolton last July, after consuming alcohol and cocaine.
Gilligan, who lived with his partner and three children, died about an hour after suffering stab wounds to his shoulder and chest.
The teenager had earlier posted a message on Facebook that read: ”I’m twisted at home … I feel like killin some1 need to stay off the hard stuff …”
The jury was told earlier in the trial that Ramsden had gone on a three-day alcohol and cocaine binge and had not slept for 36 hours leading up to the attack.
”This was a senseless and unprovoked murder which has devastated Paul Gilligan’s family,” judge Nigel Teare said during sentencing, adding: ”Nothing Paul Gilligan did could justify or excuse your actions.”
Ramsden and Gilligan were seen playfighting minutes before the incident, prosecutors said, and though several customers at the bar where the incident occurred witnessed the attack, they did not realise Gilligan had been stabbed.
He was arrested later the same evening when a nightclub doorman found he was carrying a knife.
Though Ramsden’s posting on Facebook had been deleted, it was recovered by detectives from a computer used by a witness who had accessed the site after learning of the stabbing.
”This youth has never shown remorse and he felt he was untouchable. He knew he had killed a man, one loved by many, in a heartless, shocking, cowardly stabbing,” Gilligan’s partner and family said in a statement read by Detective Inspector Mark Roters of Greater Manchester Police.
”Paul didn’t deserve this, nor would he have anticipated such brutality.” – AFP
