Murderer given life for killing man mistaken for paedophile

Brian Kearney, 21, donned a dark, hooded jacket and a joiner's belt filled with deadly weapons before cycling to a deserted barn where he launched the attack on Barry Sewell, 49.

Newcastle Crown Court heard how he repeatedly battered Mr Sewell's head with hammers, used a bar to smash his kneecaps and shins and dropped 15kg breeze blocks on his head before ramming a metal pole into his body.

At the sentencing hearing yesterday, Judge David Hodson said: "The attack you mounted on Mr Sewell was about as ferocious and as savage and as sustained an attack I think I have ever heard.

"You used such a severe degree of force that almost the entire contents of his head had been extruded."

Brian Forster, prosecuting, had told the court how Kearney targeted Mr Sewell, whose wife had died of cancer some years earlier, in the mistaken belief he was a paedophile.

Judge Hodson said he was satisfied Kearney's belief had "absolutely no substance whatsoever" and was completely false.

Kearney had initially denied having anything to do with the murder but after the "killing suit", comprising of the hooded top, and tool belt containing two mallet-type hammers and a claw hammer, were found in his mother's shed, he confessed.

The court heard how Mr Sewell, who has grown-up children, turned to alcohol after the death of his wife and was living on the streets at the time of his death.

Kearney, of Morgan Street, Southwick, Sunderland, pleaded guilty to murder earlier this week.

Judge Hodson sentenced Kearney to life behind bars with the recommendation he is not even considered for release for at least 21 years, minus the five months he has already spent in custody since the murder.

After the hearing Mr Sewell's daughter Kelly Sewell, 25, who was one of many family members in court, paid tribute to her father.

She said; "My dad was a loving father and grandfather who will be missed by his family as much as he was loved by them.