Three teenagers charged with the murder of a homeless man reportedly laughed as they ran away from his body in the street. Brothers Connor, 17, and Brandon Doran, 14, and their friend Simon Evans, 14, attacked Kevin Bennett, 53, while he slept outside a supermarket in Liverpool. Connor, described as the “leader of the pack”, goaded Simon by saying, “I bet you haven’t got it in you to do him in”. Simon later said: “I started kicking him, I booted him and now he’s dead.” Brandon was lookout during the brutal beating.
All three of them denied murder but were found guilty in 2013 following a four-week trial at Liverpool Crown Court. Connor was sentenced to a minimum of 12 years in prison, Simon a minimum of eight years, and Brandon six years. Judge Clement Goldstone KC, the Recorder of Liverpool, said: “I think it is a desperately sad reflection on this society that each of you was party to serious violence purely for the sake of it.”
Kevin died in hospital six days after the attack due to blood poisoning from an infection, which caused his organs to fail. He was described as “vulnerable” and a “heavy drinker”.
The teenagers fractured his eye socket, collapsed his lung, and broke his ribcage, which detached from his chest.
Kevin was drinking in a local pub from 11am on the night of the attack, where he’d drunk up to a dozen cans of lager.
He left after midnight and found somewhere behind an Iceland supermarket to sleep when the boys approached him. He was found at 7am the next day by Iceland staff arriving for work.
Prosecutor Alan Conrad KC, said: “Mr Bennett had done nothing to deserve such violence. Those who attacked him were much younger and more agile than he was – very young indeed.”
The brothers’ mother Linda, 42, was also jailed for 30 months for perverting the course of justice after she provided fake alibis for her sons.
Judge Goldstone addressed her: “You have another son who is serving life for murder. There are not many parents who have that sort of personal agony to bear.
“But then again not that many mothers would have shown themselves to be either so unwilling or unable to shoulder the responsibility of motherhood as you have.”
Their eldest brother Ryan, 23, was also convicted of murder and jailed for life in 2012 for an attack on a stranger with a bottle in a takeaway.