Gang members who filmed themselves on a mobile phone kicking a barman to death in a "happy slapping" spree of violence straight out of the novel A Clockwork Orange were found guilty of killing their victim on Wednesday.
Dubbed the Sargeant crew, the four were convicted of the manslaughter of David Morley, 37, a survivor of the Admiral Duncan pub bombing in Soho six years ago.
They attacked him as he chatted to a friend on a bench on the South Bank of London; witnesses said one member, a 15-year-old girl, had put the last boot into his skull. The gang later watched the attack at home on the mobile phone.
It took an Old Bailey jury 26 hours to find Darren Case, 18, Reece Sargeant, 21, a 17-year-old boy and the 15-year old girl, all from south London, not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.
Morley, who worked at Bromptons bar in Earls Court, west London, was one of several victims of the gang, and it was his death in October last year that brought their attacks to an end.
Details of their lifestyles, in which violence became the drug of pleasure, emerged in court. The girl and her friends were addicted to happy slapping, the growing youth cult of attacking passersby and filming the results on mobile phones.
Like the so-called droogs in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange, they chose the South Bank in London as the hunting ground for their "ultra violence," but added a 21st-century twist with the mobile phone pictures.
Over several months last year they went on "all-nighters," feral sprees of violence on Friday nights when the girl, the daughter of a drug addict mother and an alcoholic father, was allowed out by her foster parents.
"It was because of her they did what they did. Because she wanted to film it on the video phone -- people being beaten up," a 17-year-old member of the gang told the court.
They all dressed in hooded tops, but marked out their individuality in different ways. Case, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, carried a pair of rice flails and always had the left arm of his hoodie rolled up.
A girl associated with the gang told the court they would plot attacks at Case's home in Kennington, south London, and would drink heavily before they went out.
"It was like a little cult thing when they were all gathered around a cauldron. They would say, `Who are we beating up tonight, are we beating up druggies, are we beating tramps or are we going out to beat up people in the street?'" she told police.
It was pure chance that Morley crossed their path during one of their weekly forays around Hungerford Bridge in the early hours of the morning.
Six years earlier Morley had survived the nail bomb attack on the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, where he was the bar manager. He was haunted by nightmares about the blast and had asked a friend to meet him on the night he was killed because he felt depressed.
But on the banks of the river Thames, the happy slapping gang managed to do what the Soho bomber, David Copeland, a racist, homophobic loner, had not. Pointing her mobile phone at Morley the teenage girl, known by her graffiti tag of Zobbs, said, "We're doing a documentary on happy slapping. Pose for the camera."
That cue began an assault so violent that Morley was left with 44 impact injuries and a ruptured spleen.
His friend, Alastair Whitehead, watched the girl land the final kicks to his head.
"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," he said. "She did that two or three times, maybe more. The image of it will stay with me for ever."
On the same night, six other people were attacked in the space of 56 minutes.
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