'Happy slapping' teenagers jailed for attack on grandfather

 Guardian

Leon Elcock, 16, and Hamza Lyzai, 15, guilty of manslaughter after attacking man in front of his granddaughter Two teenagers who killed a grandfather in a "happy-slapping" attack that was witnessed by the victim's three-year-old granddaughter were jailed today after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

Ekram Haque, 67, was on his way home from a mosque with his granddaughter, Marian, when he was attacked by Leon Elcock, 16, and Hamza Lyzai, 15, in Tooting, south London.

The little girl saw the assault and can be seen trying to help him in CCTV footage.

But Haque, who cracked his head after being knocked to the ground, suffered irreparable brain damage and died a week after the attack last August.

Elcock and Lyzai, both from Tooting, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and also admitted their parts in other assaults in which, the Old Bailey heard, they had "targeted people for fun".

Haque's death was the culmination of a series of "happy-slappings" that were recorded on mobile phones.

Jailing Elcock for four-and-a-half years and Lyzai for three-and-a-half years, Judge Martin Stephens said: "As a result of your so-called bit of fun he was deprived of a full, contented life, and his family of a devoted, beloved father and grandfather." The judge also lifted reporting restrictions so that the pair could be named as a warning to others. A third youth, aged 15, who cannot be named, was locked up for six months after admitting, with Elcock, actual bodily harm against an elderly couple.

Police later recovered six video clips of "happy-slappings" in which youths would shout out "Lane Gang Productions".

The judge told the three defendants they had "committed a series of very serious cowardly and deeply unpleasant assaults offences against elderly and vulnerable men and women". But he said his powers of sentence for the assaults were "very limited" because of their ages.

Both killers will be released on licence after serving half their sentences, minus nearly a year they have already been in custody, while the 15-year-old has in effect completed his sentence already

The victim's son, Arfan Haque, who told the Old Bailey that his father and daughter had brought "a great deal of happiness" to each other's lives, said he was bitterly disappointed by the sentences.

Speaking outside court, he said: ""The CPS really need to buck up their ideas because people are getting away with murder. My father died. It's a disgrace."