A man accused of murdering Sunderland teenager Kieran Williams has been found guilty of manslaughter, as his co-accused was acquitted.
Louis Hackett was found guilty of the manslaughter of Kieran Williams, whose body was found in a makeshift grave in Sunderland last year.
Both Mr Hackett, 20, and co-accused Ben Cook, 19, had denied murdering the 18-year-old.
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The jury found Hackett, of Fordenbridge Square, Sunderland not guilty of murder but guilty of Mr Williams’ manslaughter on a majority verdict. A cry could be heard from the public gallery as Mr Hackett was given the verdict.
Mr Cook, of Fordfield Road, Sunderland was acquitted of murder and allowed to walk free.
The jury had been unable to reach a unanimous decision on one of the defendants after hours of deliberations. On Thursday (February 2) morning Judge Mr Justice Robert Kay told jurors he would an accept a majority verdict where at least 10 members were in agreement. Members of the jury returned around 45 minutes later to deliver the verdict.
The defendants appeared in the dock at Newcastle Crown Court on Thursday flanked by three security officers as they learnt their fates.
No date was set for Mr Hackett’s sentencing, with a report to be prepared in due course.
Kieran Williams’ body was found in a makeshift grave in a secluded tree-lined area on a former industrial site, near to the new Northern Spire Bridge on the southern banks of the River Wear in June last year.
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The 18-year-old deceased died from blood loss caused by multiple stab wounds.
Newcastle Crown Court has heard that both defendants denied knowledge of Mr Williams’ whereabouts in the weeks before his burial site was discovered by a police dog handler, acting on a tip-off.
But after the grave was found and Mr Williams’ partly decomposed body was recovered, almost six weeks after his disappearance, forensic examination of the soil in the burial site revealed the presence of Mr Hackett’s finger prints on clods of clay.
When that was put to him by police in interview, he changed his story and accepted being present when Mr Williams was killed.
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But he accused Mr Cook of being responsible for the killing and said he only went along with his instructions to help to place the body in the pre-dug grave and to fill it with soil out of fear, as his co-accused was still holding the knife.
In response, Mr Cook said it was Mr Hackett who carried out the fatal stabbing and said he watched in shock before being told to leave the scene and to tell no-one what had happened.
The prosecution argued that both were involved in the plot to lure Mr Williams to the scene before he was killed by one of them, assisted by his accomplice, but Mr Cook was cleared of murder on Thursday.
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