Rhys Jones killer Sean Mercer gets 22 years of inprisonment

Sean Mercer, a gun-obsessed teenager, was today sentenced to a minimum of 22 years in prison after being found guilty of the murder of schoolboy Rhys Jones, one of Britain's youngest victims of gangland violence.

In sentencing Mercer, the judge Mr Justice Irwin said: "This offence arose from the stupid, brutal gang conflict which has struck this part of Liverpool. You were caught up in that from a young age, but it is clear you gloried in it. It is wrong to let anyone glorify or romanticise this kind of gang conflict.

The jury of seven women and five men unanimously convicted Mercer of murder after almost four days of deliberations. They reached their verdict yesterday but it could not be reported until this afternoon.

Mercer, 18, a member of the Crocky Young Guns gang, shot Rhys while he walked home from football practice in Croxteth, Liverpool, in August last year. He missed his intended victims – members of a rival gang who had gathered in a pub car park – and hit Rhys in the neck with a stray bullet. He died at the scene in the arms of his mother. Src:The Guardian