The Trafalgar Square killers: two found guilty of attack that left gay man dead

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

An evening out in London for 62-year-old civil servant Ian Baynham and a friend ended horrifically in Trafalgar Square when he was attacked, stamped on and kicked by drunken teenagers screaming homophobic abuse. The incident led to a former private-school pupil and her ex-boyfriend being convicted of manslaughter at the Old Bailey today.

Baynham, who was gay, was pushed to the ground and then stamped on and kicked as he lay unconscious during the attack in September last year. He died in the Royal London hospital from brain injuries 18 days later without regaining consciousness.

The court was told that in a scene likened to Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange, Ruby Thomas, who was then 17, smiled as she kicked Baynham after he had been knocked down by another teenager, Joel Alexander, while tourists looked on in horror. Police later found Baynham's blood on her handbag and the ballet pumps she had been wearing.

A former boyfriend of Thomas, now 18, had told the jury she was not the type of girl to have carried out such an assault, but she had a previous record of violence, having been convicted of assaulting a bus driver in Northumberland Avenue, near Trafalgar Square, when she was 15.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/16/trafalgar-square-guilty-attack-gay-man

[cvoogt]

1. nice one, tourists

If they were so horrified, why didn't they intervene?

[Demoiselle]

3. My thoughts exactly...

By my count there were three "perps," at the most What the hell....Surely the "tourists" in Trafalgar Square (not usually deserted at any time of day or night) could have overpowered these yobbos. And, by the way, tourists, schmourists. There are plenty of native born UK types in Trafalgar Square at any given time, too.
The "private school" theme in the article is a bit much. Psychopaths can turn up anywhere...and there's no "training them out of it" with fancy schooling.
(I fervently hope that the nitpicking above does not convince anybody that I'm sympathetic to this horror.)

[Mike Nelson]

2. There must be a gene...

...for evil.

[edbermac]

4. "in a scene likened to Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange"

Huh?

Were they wearing codpieces and bowler hats while crooning "Singin' In The Rain?"

[No Elephants]

5. I was said to a lit prof and movie buff "People debated whether the future would be more like

1984 or Brave New World. Turns out, it was Clockwork Orange."

[closeupready]

6. Scumbags.

:mad: