Killer, 15, sentenced to at least 13 years in custody
Leo Ross’s teenage killer will spend a minimum of 13 years behind bars, the judge has told the court.
He added:
Then it will be up to the parole board to determine if you can be released.
You will be on licence for the rest of your life.
Key events
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Judge: ‘You robbed Leo of his life and his future’
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Killer, 15, sentenced to at least 13 years in custody
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Teenage killer has suffered from ‘formidable mental health problems’
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‘I have lost everything’, Leo’s mother tells the court
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Life since Leo was killed has been like a ‘living hell’, father says
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‘If love could’ve saved Leo he would’ve lived forever’, mother says
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Judge agrees to delay in lifting reporting restrictions to allow appeal
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Judge rules teenage killer can be named after press argued for lifting of anonymity
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Leo Ross’s killer remains ‘a young and vulnerable human being’, defence lawyer says
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Sentencing hearing at Birmingham Crown Court begins
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Leo was ‘the sweetest, kindest boy’ whose life was ‘cut short by a senseless act’, family says
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Teenage boy who admitted murdering Leo Ross, 12, due to be sentenced today
The judge is now setting out his basis for sentencing, which as we heard earlier will see the teenager detained for a minimum of 13 years.
He says his mental state did not affect his actions and that he “engaged in serious acts of violence against vulnerable individuals who were seen to be walking alone in the park”.
Your actions in the park … did involve significant planning. Your attacks were not impulsive.
Judge Choudhury says he does consider there to have been “significant planning” to the attack.
The judge says the teenage killer had a difficult childhood, first exhibiting behavioural issues at the age of two.
He said:
There is some suggestion in the report that you are young for your age.
However, it seems to me that your actions around the time of your offending indicate quite sophisticated and callous thinking designed to throw people off your trail.
He adds that the killer acts “even the most basic insight” into your actions and does not understand what “sorry” means.
The judge says that the teenager rode around Shire Country Park, Hall Green in Birmingham, looking for potential victims to attack at random.
In the days leading up to the murder, the killer assaulted several people, including elderly women.
He said the defendant alerted people to what he had done to his victims by pretending he was an innocent bystander was part of a pattern in which he enjoyed “witnessing the havoc you have created”.
After his first attack on an 82-year-old woman, the defendant alerted a youth he knew to what had happened, telling them an elderly person had been “beat half to death” in the park.
The judge said: “The savagery required to inflict such injuries to a defenceless elderly lady is hard to comprehend.”
He added: “Your description of beating a person half to death reveals you are very much aware of what you did and how serious it was.”
Justice Choudhury goes on to describe Leo as a “lovely little boy who loved learning, collecting and exploring”.
He says Leo was “normally a sweet boy with impeccable manners and a big heart’” and reads out brief extracts from the victim statements we heard earlier, including from Leo’s parents.
The judge is now ruminating on the teenager’s attack on an elderly lady, who he pushed into a ditch and attacked.
“The savagery required to attack such injuries” had been “hard to imagine” he added.
Judge: ‘You robbed Leo of his life and his future’
The judge in the case, Justice Choudhury KC, is now delivering his televised remarks following the handing down of the sentence.
Addressing the teenage killer, who still cannot be named for legal reasons, he says:
You are still a child. You were only 14-years-old at the time of these offences.
But right-thinking people would struggle to comprehend that what you did – over the course of just three days in January last year – were the actions of a child.
He adds:
Leo was an innocent schoolboy, who was just on his way to meet a friend in the park … you stabbed Leo with a knife and left him to die. Leo was only 12 years old.
The devastation you have caused to so many lives is hard to comprehend and for those who knew and loved Leo, almost too great to bare.
You have robbed Leo of his life and his future.
Killer, 15, sentenced to at least 13 years in custody
Leo Ross’s teenage killer will spend a minimum of 13 years behind bars, the judge has told the court.
He added:
Then it will be up to the parole board to determine if you can be released.
You will be on licence for the rest of your life.
Defending the 15-year-old, Alistair Webster said he has a “severe” conduct disorder which would have affected his ability to form a rational judgment.
Webster said the defendant is not someone who “clearly plans what he does” and his actions had been “inconsistent, odd and for no apparent reason”.
He said:
He has a repeated history of hearing voices. It did come as a surprise that he hasn’t been diagnosed as schizophrenic. Perhaps he is too young for that.
He added that the defendant was “in a far from normal and deteriorating mental state” before he committed the offences.
Teenage killer has suffered from ‘formidable mental health problems’
Defence barrister Alistair Webster said the 15-year-old killer of Leo Ross has “formidable mental health problems”.
Webster told the court that the teenager “shows recurrent episode of self-harm” and other “bizarre” behaviours.
In mitigation, the barrister said the defendant has been diagnosed with childhood conduct disorder and ADHD, and has previously had suicidal thoughts.
Webster added:
He has formidable mental health problems which present a picture which we can see is an alarming one.
In mitigation, the defendant’s counsel Alistair Webster said it was impossible to give a reason why the 15-year-old had decided to kill Leo and attack vulnerable elderly women.
He said:
The effect upon family, friends, is long-standing and significant and I want to make it clear nothing we will say should be seen as suggesting any of his victims were inviting what he did to them.
[Leo’s] mum and others want to know what lay behind the killing of Leo. It is, in reality, impossible to give a logical reason.
He added:
His behaviour has been an appalling shock to his own family and left them, in turn, in torment. Many lives have been seriously adversely affected and of course, Leo’s life was taken from him.
He will, reflecting the serious nature of the offending, have to be detained for life.
The teenager who killed 12-year-old schoolboy Leo Ross wrote a note which said he was going to hold his “hands up” about the stabbing, the court heard.
Prosecution KC Rachel Brand told the court that on 2 July last year, a member of staff at the secure children’s home the defendant was living at found a handwritten note in his room.
The barrister read aloud the note, which said:
I’m not going to lie, I will hold my hands up and say that I done it.
I stabbed him, lower right stomach.
‘I have lost everything’, Leo’s mother tells the court
We can bring you some more from the statement read out by Leo’s mother, Rachel Fisher, earlier.
She told the court:
Everyone has lost the most beautiful little soul, for what? We won’t ever know why such an innocent young boy, just walking home from school, minding his business, was robbed of his life for no reason whatsoever.
His funeral was beautiful. The streets were lined by people paying their respects but it should never have happened.
His life should have been just beginning but now he will never get to have his first job, his first car, get married or have his own children.
I will never see my lovely boy get married or have a family of his own. I have lost everything I did have and would have with him.
Instead of seeing my son living and enjoying his life, all I have is memories and photos and seeing him in my dreams. A part of me left that day and I will never get that part of me back.
