Supplier of Rhys Jones gun has jail term doubled

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Updated:


James Yates, 21, armed the killer of Liverpool schoolboy Rhys Jones

Gangster: James Yates, 21, armed the killer of Liverpool schoolboy Rhys Jones

The gang member who armed the killer of Rhys Jones yesterday had his sentence almost doubled at the Court of Appeal.

James Yates, 21, was jailed for seven years at Liverpool Crown Court in January after being found guilty of two counts of assisting an offender and possessing a prohibited firearm.

Yates had provided the Smith and Wesson handgun used by Sean Mercer to kill 11-year-old Rhys in Croxteth, Liverpool, August 2007 and he had helped with its concealment afterwards.

But yesterday - after a reference to the Court of Appeal by the country's senior law officer, the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland QC - Yates's sentence was increased to 12 years.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, agreed with the Attorney General's lawyers that the seven-year term was 'unduly lenient'.

Yates had received seven years for possession of the firearm and six years concurrent for assisting Mercer, but Lord Judge said the terms should run consecutively, with just a one-year cut to the sum total of the term.

He told the court that stern sentences must be passed in any case where offenders handle guns in connection with gang culture, which has an 'insidious and corrosive' impact on communities - and had frightened the north Liverpool community into silence after the killing.

Rhys Jones, 11, was shot dead in August 2007 in a Liverpool pub car park as he made his way home from football training

Victim: Rhys Jones, 11, was shot dead in August 2007 in a Liverpool pub car park as he made his way home from football training

Mercer was a member of the Croxteth Crew gang and had used Yates's gun to fire at two members of a rival gang from nearby Norris Green.

Rhys died in his mother's arms after he was caught in the line of fire as he made his way home from football practice.

Lord Judge said: 'There can be no doubt whatever that, when he handed over the gun to Mercer, Yates must have realised that Mercer's purpose was that the gun would be used in connection with the gang rivalry and warfare.'

'It is, of course, true that the offender was a young man when he committed these offences and he had no significant previous convictions. 

Stephen and Melanie Jones, Rhys's parents, leave the Royal Courts of Justice in central London after the hearing

Relieved: Stephen and Melanie Jones, Rhys's parents, leave the Royal Courts of Justice in central London after the hearing

'But he was . . . an active member of a gang, engaged in a long-term and ongoing violent feud with a rival gang, who had been in possession of a lethal weapon for at least four months before it was used.'

Lord Judge offered the court's sympathy to Rhys's family who attended the hearing.

'He (Rhys) was doing what any 11-year-old boy, healthy and well and fit, should be encouraged to do, playing and learning how to grow up,' he said.

Yates appeared in the dock yesterday, with close cropped hair and wearing a white T-shirt, but spoke only to confirm his name before the case was heard.

Mercer was convicted of murder in December 2008. He was jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum of 22 years before applying for parole.


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