Teen gets 25-year jail term for vengeful murder

London: The teenage thug who shot young Peter Woodhams dead in front of his fiancee and child was jailed for at least 25 years at the Old Bailey on Friday.

Woodhams was murdered outside his home last August after suffering a campaign of intimidation from a teenage gang.

Bradley Tucker, 18, was convicted of murder in March. On Friday, he was ordered to be detained for life by the Recorder of London Peter Beaumont Q.C. The judge told him: "There are no mitigating factors in your case. You were not provoked in any legal or real sense. You perceived disrespect, you feared loss of face in a challenge that you perceived from the man you shot.

"To meet that challenge you acquired a loaded gun. You followed this man to his home in broad daylight and you shot him repeatedly," the judge observed.

Woodhams' fiancee Jane Bowden, 24, left the court in tears as Tucker's family yelled their support from the public gallery. Tucker, a painter and decorator from Canning Town, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denied murder at his trial.

Gang attack

Seven months before the murder, Woodhams, a 22-year-old satellite TV engineer, had been stabbed in the neck and slashed across the face by members of the same gang.

Nobody was arrested for the attack and nine police officers face an independent misconduct inquiry into allegations that they failed to carry out a thorough investigation.

Woodhams continued to be taunted by the gang. When he saw them smoking cannabis outside a local supermarket, he parked his car and headed towards them. The gang fled with Tucker saying: "I will...have him when he comes by."

Woodhams parked his car outside his house and Tucker pulled his gun, advanced on him and fired several shots, one piercing his heart.