A LURGAN schoolboy was savagely attacked by four men, who beat him unconscious before tipping him from a top landing window in a block of flats, a Crown prosecutor told a murder trial yesterday.
Prosecution counsel Mr Terence Mooney QC told Belfast Crown Court the 15 year old boy had got drunk on vodka and wine to escape the pressures of exams and was staggering home when he was viciously set upon.
His parents sobbed in court yesterday as a police video of the battered body of their son, Gavin Malcolm, was shown to the jury. The boy's body was pictured sprawled at the foot of a four storey block of flats in Lurgan, Co Armagh, from which he had been thrown.
One man, Thomas Haggan (19), who has been jailed already after confessing to his part in the killing on April 8th, 1994, is to give evidence against three other men. The three, all from Lurgan, are Mr Jason Chittick (22), Mr Keith Brown (23) and Mr William Turkington (18). They all deny the boy's murder.
Both Mr Chittick and Mr Turkington admit being present, but deny having anything to do with the youngster's death, while Mr Brown claimed he had left long before the attack began.
But Mr Mooney said they were, like a "pack of hyenas", who savagely attacked the schoolboy.
Mr Turkington, Mr Mooney said, was the first to attack kicking the schoolboy in the face before being joined by the others. Mr Turkington had been looking for an excuse to attack these schoolboy and was firstly joined Haggan, who kicked him in the stomach. Then as the youngster was "going down, backing away, Chittick and Brown came over and joined in".
But on hearing a car approach, the four slunk off into the shadows as the schoolboy tried to flag it down, to no avail, and was left again at the mercy of the gang. According to Haggan, Mr Turkington hit him over the head with a bottle of wine and "he did not make any more sounds".
Then Mr Brown allegedly said: "He's going off the roof."
The prosecutor added that there was no motive and no provocation for the attack but that "which appeared to stem from him coming on to their territory, an unwanted person".
The trial continues today.