Eden student jailed for manslaughter (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Eden student jailed for manslaughter

12:40pm Thursday 2nd July 2009

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AN EDEN student has been jailed for four years for his part in a brawl which left a man dead.

Richard Faustino, 22, of Salkeld Croft, Appleby, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, is the last of four students to have been jailed for the death of 24-year-old Sion Hardy.

Judge Henry Globe, QC, the Recorder of Liverpool, said Faustino admitted becoming involved in unlawful fighting outside a Liverpool nightclub in the early hours of November 15, 2007.

During the course of this the victim suffered a heavy blow or blows to the left side of his neck from which he died.

The judge said: “It is a sad fact of society today that the incidence of violence is frequently fuelled by an excess of alcohol.

“It is a worrying feature for all sections of the public, none more so that the parents of students who go away from home to study."

Mr Hardy, of Bangor, North Wales, was walking home after a night out at the Nation nightclub in Wolstenholme Square.

On leaving the club he had met by chance childhood friend Stephen Lunne, and they and another friend set off through a pedestrian tunnel.

Earlier Mr Lunne had been involved in a confrontation with one of Faustino's friends, Kevin O'Dea, which had followed a minor incident on a dance floor push some weeks earlier.

Outside the club Faustino pointed out Mr Lunne to one of his four friends, Tom Canning, who was ‘spoiling for a fight’ and they followed the other men into the tunnel.

CCTV footage showed the four students leaving the tunnel just 40 seconds later back slapping and ‘high five-ing’ on their way home, said Tania Griffiths, QC, prosecuting.

O'Dea, of County Donegal, and Simon Taylor, of Ashton-in-Makerfield, who were both convicted of manslaughter after a trial were each jailed for seven years last year.

Canning, of Crickhowell, Powys, pleaded guilty earlier this year and received four years.

Faustino had been due to face trial on Monday but he changed his plea. He pleaded guilty on the basis that he had carried out no aggressive act inside the tunnel.

Faustino, of previous good character, had been told last year he would not be prosecuted and would be called as a witnesses, but ended up being charged with manslaughter, the court heard.

John McDermott, QC, defending, said: “For a young man of his age and experience to have done nothing more than follow a friend, who he knew was spoiling for a fight, a few yards into the tunnel in case his friend began to get the worse of it and then to have done no aggressive act at all, to discover in the eyes of the law he might be guilty of committing manslaughter was no easy conclusion."

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