Three British teens — Joel Alexander, Ruby Thomas, and Rachel Burke — are currently facing manslaughter charges for the 2009 slaying of 62-year-old gay man Ian Baynham. The accused teens admitted to calling Baynham “a fucking faggot”, punching him down, and then kicking and stomping his chest while he lay on the ground. Baynham died of a brain injury sustained during the attack, yet all three teens have plead “not guilty” while the prosecutor says that alcohol played a factor. Perhaps the barrister should call Captain Morgan and Johnny Walker to the stand.
According to Alexander, he and his scally crew were out in London celebrating his girlfriend’s birthday. He says Ms. Thomas had been “lairy [and] mouthy.” Alexander says Thomas also tried to pick a fight with another group of young folks earlier in the evening. When she saw Baynham and his partner Philip Brown walking past, she shouted, “Fucking faggots!” as all proper young women do.
Alexander says Thomas hit Baynham twice with her handbag and that Bayham took the bag from her and hit her back. “What I was perceiving was a grown man hitting a girl,” Alexander says. “She was more subdued; she wasn’t as lairy any more. It looked to me as if the man was starting to get the better of her.” So in response Alexander came over, punched Baynham in the face knocking him to the ground, and said “You can’t hit girls” before Ms. Thomas proceeded to kick and stomp the man’s chest as he lay on the ground. So for those of you paying attention, hitting drunken teen slags is not OK. Killing 62-year-old gay men totally is.
(Ms. Thomas is no choir girl. She plead guilty two years ago to spitting on a Middle-Eastern bus driver in the same London vicinity. She then punched the driver in the back of the head and kicked him when he asked her to stop.)
How about we take this to the next level?
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The prosecutor in this case is saying that the Clockwork Orange-style attack was “fueled by copious amounts of alcohol.” At least it’s not a gay panic defense?
Mike
um WOW…someone needs counseling! I hope they lock these three idiots up and throw away the key. They clearly are a danger to society.
William Day
The tragic part is, these degenrate animals will, in the unlikely event of them being imprisoned, be back out on the streets within ten years. Huzzah for the British court system! Huzzah!
(Dejectedly waves Union Flag)
utard
it’s hard to believe that people so young can be so calloused.
ChrisM
Why is the prosecutor arguing that alcohol was involved? Alcohol does not make normal people feel the urge to kill a man. The fact that a lawyer would even use this as a defense is pathetic. It sounds like the boyfriend has admitted to the murder of this guy. So it seems like this case is turning into an argument over why it’s not that big of a deal, which is disturbing.
ChrisM
Hmmm, now I’m not sure if my above comment is dumb or if there’s a mistake in the article. Is the PROSECUTOR claiming there was a lot of alcohol involved or is the DEFENDANT doing so (the assumption under which my comment was made)?
biguy
I wish some fucking punk like Joel Alexander and his two sluts would start shit with me when I’m out with a guy and have been drinking. Joel and his gf would be lynched a lot of places for dating but they’re not bothered about being violent bigots themselves. Disgusting.
nikko
Amen, BIGUY, I’m with you….mmmm,I love me some delish bi-guys!!!
TommyOC
Stupid violent Americans, always — oh, wait…
Pitou
Thomas totally looks like a complete CUNT! Burke played along because she’s the FAT chick who will do anything to be friends with the “popular” cunty pretty girl.
I hope they all get life sentances.
Scott in NYC
Little Miss Ruby sounds like a complete piece of shit, and probably got away with a lot more than has been reported in the past. Now this murderous little anti-gay bigot will NOT get away with it (hopefully) and there will be some justice in the world.
DR (the real one, not the guy who made post #12)
Hmmm…..
I admit I know very little about the British legal system and how it charges defendants, but it is an interesting way to take the wind out of the defense by charging manslaughter (which seems appropriate in this case) and claiming alcohol was motivating.
I did go online and verify that the Prosecutor is in fact making these statements. He’s making it out to be an alcohol-fueled rampage. This is a pretty tidy summation of the case, despite the editorial comments otherwise; voluntary manslaughter is murder with malice aforethought but with mitigating circumstances (and I don’t think that applies here) and involuntary manslaughter is no intent to kill, but the death of another is caused as the through criminal negligence or recklessness (defined as defined as a blatant disregard for the dangers of a particular situation).
The prosecutor is going with what he has, and what he has is three obnoxious, drunk kids who beat up an older man who died 3 weeks later. This is horrible, but if he can’t make a case for homicide, he has to go with what he can prove. What’s better in this case (since we can’t bring the deceased back to life), having a good attorney get these kids a “not guilty” or getting a conviction for manslaughter?
Alex
I can’t wait for David Cameron to be prime minister
james_in_cambridge
The UK has a serious problem with these idiot teens who get blasted and cause havoc in the streets, especially on weekend nights. And I don’t understand why this is just a manslaughter charge. It sounds like murder to me (also, thank god for our ridiculously tougher laws so cunts like these three would probably have gotten 15 to life in the US).
james_in_cambridge
@Alex: Really? I thought Cameron was running third behind the Liberal Democrats & Labour? And if no one gets a majority, aren’t the two left parties simply going to form a coalition??
Giovannidude
The UK has been getting a well-deserved reputation as the shame of Europe: it has the most drunken, disrespectful, and violent young yobs. And yobettes.
No wonder decent British citizens are abandoning the country of their birth for Portugal and Spain, some Germany and so on. For those going to Spain (the major destination), the weather’s much better too.
An older British guy told me he is still proud to be British, but the country isn’t the same anymore, and he feels much safer on the streets of Germany, where they don’t tolerate this sort of nonsense. He said drunken knife fights outside pubs are common in England today.
A woman said she felt safer walking home at 2am in Barcelona than at 2pm in any British city.
If it’s any satisfaction, it isn’t just gays who have to worry in England. It’s everybody!
Katie
Well I live in Britain, and I certainly wouldn’t go out after dark around the area I live.
In fact, a few years’ ago I narrowly avoided an attack similar to that carried out on poor Mr Baynham. I was returning home from evening class at around 8.00pm and I’d only just got off the bus when a group of 15 ‘tanked-up’ (mostly) young males who were blocking the path swearing, drinking and urinating (around the 14 to 16 age group – total strangers) took exception to the fact that I’m transgendered, started shouting abuse, started lunging at me with their fists and then chased after me shouting stuff like ‘it’s a f…ing queer’, ‘get the queer’ etc. Fortunately, as I lived just down the street and I happened to be wearing flats that day, I managed to run home to safety. When I got inside they gathered outside the house shouting threats like: “We know where you live” etc.
I phoned the police and to their credit they came within the hour. There had also been reports of vandalised cars, wing mirrors broken off etc. so they went to investigate that first but when they came back they took a statement from me and told me that they’d try and get an ASBO put on the group because they’d been causing a huge amount of problems in the area – like stoning taxi cabs, general vandalism to property, assault, intimidating local shopkeepers – there were even a few cases of sexual harassment.
In the meantime, I asked the cop what I should do if the group chased after me and tried to attack me again. He advised me to buy a personal safety alarm and told me if they started to pursue me again to run to the nearest door and bang loudly. Although, I doubt much that would have helped as, being fairly early in the evening, there were bystanders around at the time – but they either just walked on by whilst it was happening (understandble that they’d be too scared to get involved) or (I find less understandble) just stopped and stared at me afterwards – like I was the crazy one for running down the street and screaming(!)
Anyway, sorry this is turning into my life story (!), but to cut the story short; they weren’t able to get the ASBO put on the lads and all they could do was caution them and tell them to ‘move along’ etc. Consequently, I saw them around quite a lot afterwards (fortunately for me though I could afford to buy a car – so they just had to be content with shouting stuff) Sadly, they went on to commit quite a few more crimes against local people after that getting more and more confident . Soon after, I read about a serious sexual assault against a young woman by a gang in the local newspaper – to be honest I don’t know whether they were involved though. If they’d caught me, to be fair, I doubt very much whether they would have sexually assaulted me as their attitude towards me was more one of disgust than anything –I think they were just looking for someone to beat up – nasty nonetheless, though.
Peter
The jury have been out for two days now so the case is not a clear as we believe.
As we do not like punishing young women they will probably get a minor sentence (months)even if they are found guilty. For once the USA would have a right approach to these three thugs.
But in the UK we have little regard for the victim.
dam
@Peter: This is true im surprised gay people on here arent wanting dead soft penalties in line with humanisms view on crimes and that we cant moralize about anything…. I do worry whether if this had been some preacher these thugs attacked whether folk on here would then say the judge got it spot on and we cant go ever putting any women in prision…
dam
@Scott in NYC: This is true im surprised gay people on here arent wanting dead soft penalties in line with humanisms view on crimes and that we cant moralize about anything…. I do worry whether if this had been some preacher these thugs attacked whether folk on here would then say the judge got it spot on and we cant go ever putting any women in prision
Full story here: http://www.queerty.com/british-teens-suspected-of-brutal-killing-point-to-their-blood-alcohol-levels-20100505/#ixzz2o61zZYZm