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Two teenagers have been found guilty of killing a man they believed was a paedophile by luring him to a beach where another teenager threw rocks at him.
A 16-year-old girl and 15-year-old boy were cleared of murdering Alexander Cashford, 49, but convicted of the secondary charge of manslaughter at Woolwich crown court.
The attack took place in Leysdown-on-Sea on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent on 10 August last year after Cashford had given his phone number to the girl two days earlier.
A 16-year-old boy who was also involved in the attack previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The three defendants cannot be legally named because of their ages.
The court heard that the three teenagers exchanged messages with Cashford using the alias Sienna after he had met the 16-year-old girl at an amusement arcade and given her a business card with a fake name.
Messages show that the man claimed to be 30, asked the girl if she liked champagne and said he wanted to kiss her.
The teenagers arranged to meet him at the seafront in Leysdown-on-Sea at about 7pm, the court was told, before following him as he walked along the promenade with the girl. The teenagers then chased him and hit him with rocks and a bottle.
He was found dead face down in the mud. A postmortem examination found injuries to his face and head, bruises on his limbs and body, and fractured ribs that had punctured his lung.
The girl filmed the boys chasing the victim while shouting “fucking paedophile, I’m fucking 16, get him”. After he was arrested, the 16-year-old boy shared footage of the attack with three people, the trial heard, with the caption “fucked pedo up lol”.
During his evidence, the older boy was asked if, in the immediate aftermath – before they were arrested or discovered Cashford had died – he had thought he had “done the right thing” by attacking him. The boy replied: “Yeah, kind of, yeah.”
When asked why, he said: “Because I feel like the police wouldn’t have done anything.”
Danny Robinson KC, defending the girl, told the jury that texting Cashford started as a “big laugh” and may have turned “into a desire to expose him as someone who should be named and shamed”.
The attack was not the product of an “organised plan to kill or cause anyone really serious harm”, he said, but instead “a childish escapade that got out of hand very quickly with tragic consequences”.
The girl and the younger male defendant told the court there was never a plan to attack Cashford.
Natalie Smith, a senior prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “This was a carefully pre-planned deliberate and violent attack on someone who was not expecting it and who could not defend himself. He was first hit from behind with a bottle and despite his best attempts to flee, he was relentlessly pursued and attacked, even when witnesses reported he was lying on the ground.
“Their joint actions on that fateful evening led to Alexander Cashford’s death. His family now at least have the comfort of knowing that those responsible have been brought to justice.”
The three teenagers are expected to be sentenced in April.
