Four people have been found guilty of murdering a father who was stabbed to death near his home while trying to flee a mob attack.
Stephen Pugh, 49, Sean Neil, 42, Tina Walton, 43, and Stephanie Steel, 38, were convicted of murder after jury heard they acted like an ‘out-of-control mob out for retribution’ during the gang attack on Mark Gibson. , 52.
A fifth defendant, Aaron Chadwick, 33, was found guilty of manslaughter after the jury concluded that he was involved in the attack but did not intend to seriously harm Mr. Gibson, LancsLive reports.
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Emergency services were called to Carshalton Road in Blackpool in the early hours of July 11, where Mr Gibson lay badly injured on the pavement. During the trial, Pugh, who always denied killing Mr. Gibson, confessed that he had stabbed his father with a double-edged knife.
Each defendant claimed that they acted in self-defense after an attack on Tina Walton in which she sustained a head injury. But the jury at Preston Crown Court accepted the prosecution’s case that although Gibson may have started the trouble when he knocked on the door of a house in Boothroyden, he posed no risk to anyone when he was fatally stabbed.
During the trial, the jury was shown footage of a fight at the corner of Boothroyden and Carshalton Road. They were also shown CCTV of a riot on the front lawn of a house in Carshalton Road, in which the mob attacked Mr Gibson as he tried to run to safety.
The jury heard moments before that Mr Gibson was banging on the windows and doors, shouting: “You’re fucking weed. You’re not getting away with it. I’m from Manchester. You two are sacks of weed.” “
Witnesses heard the victim scream for help as the five defendants ran away laughing and joking. One was heard yelling ‘f*** him, let him bleed out’ as Mr Gibson lay on the pavement with a deep knife wound to his shoulder.
Head office pathologist Dr Alison Armor said the wound was so deep that it passed through Mr Gibson’s bone and into his chest cavity, causing an injury so severe that Mr Gibson would collapse within a minute of being struck. been inflicted. When police went to the house in Boothroyden, where Pugh, Walton, Neil and Steel returned after the stabbing, they found the knife used in the attack in a dishwashing bin.
Mr Gibson was taken to Blackpool Victoria Hospital but later died.
Neil and Walton, both of Boothroyden, Pugh, of Chapel Street, Steel, of Gorton Rad and Chadwick, of Warley Road, all in Blackpool, will be sentenced on 1 March.
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