Four years' jail for killing an innocent man

[dirtydog]

A man whose mother shopped him to police after he admitted killing a man has been jailed for four years after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

Terence Gaskin, 19, of no fixed address, was drunk when he carried out the unprovoked attack on 51-year-old father-of-four Kenneth Turnbull.

The victim was found unconscious by police outside the White Lion pub in Darwen, Lancashire, on 11 August.

The judge at Preston Crown Court said the attack was "inexcusable violence".

Jailing him for four years, Judge Anthony Russell QC, said: "This was utterly unprovoked, completely inexcusable violence.

"Your actions were those of a coward, committing an unprovoked attack on a vulnerable person who you and your friends saw as elderly."

At first Gaskin, who was aged 18 at the time, claimed Mr Turnbull had gone for him and claimed self defence. But the incident was caught on CCTV and showed the attack was totally unprovoked.

Gaskin walked up to the older man and, according to the defendant's own friend, "swung for the old guy with his right hand and it looked a fair hard punch which hit the old guy on the face".

His mother said she rang police after he told her: "I've killed someone. They're dead", just hours after attack. He later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

'Terrible circumstances'

Police found Mr Turnbull unconscious on a footpath outside the pub. Resuscitation attempts failed and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

A post-mortem examination revealed that Mr Turnbull died from bleeding to the brain caused by the punch, hitting him behind the left jaw bone.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/l...re/7716096.stm

He'll be out in two years then, but an innocent man with many years of life left ahead of him has been killed and his family's life devastated. Why doesn't the punishment fit the crime? Not to mention that the assailant first lied about it and made out it was provoked, when it wasn't!

[Piggymon]

Good god :/

4 years ? That's absolutely pathetic.

[Dee]

4 years is total ********.

Kudos to his mum for shopping him though.

[NokkonWud]

Shocking that in this day and age murder (not manslaughter) is shocking. 4 years should be the case for GBH, let alone manslaughter.

[phykell]

Unbelievable.

Imagine the sort of message that sends as well

The irony is, that while the antics of Brand/Ross caused a national furore in terms of media attention, something like this will be pretty much ignored.

[Desmo]

This is similar to how a friend of mine who worked for us died. Was out in town and was punched (apparently unprovoked). He fell, hit his head and was on life support for a week until they had no option but to turn it off. Less than 4 years is what the guy got. Less than 4 years for killing someone at only 18 years old with their life in front of them.

[phykell]

I've said it before elsewhere but if you deliberately punch or kick someone in the head and you kill them, even if you "didn't mean to kill them", you should be jailed for murder and nothing less.

One important aspect of a sentence that seems to falling by the wayside these days is the idea of it being a deterrent to others. It's worse than that, these days the leniency being given, is almost like giving would-be thugs and criminals a green light.