Prayers said across city for tragic Rhys

Aug 26 2007 By David Higgerson

A vicar at the centre of Rhys Jones’s community today said society needs to rebuild itself with people making more time for one another.

The Reverend Doctor David Leslie said people need to turn away from a selfish, shallow existence and embrace important subjects.

Speaking at one of two church services offered for Rhys and his family he said: “We need to apply critical thinking for a society where we find people are valued more for what they have rather than what they are.”

He added: “That might not go all the way to explaining this dreadful event but points at how more stable role models, who used to be around, have largely melted away.

“Parents need to have significant time to be with their children and very often they are unable to manage that.

“Teachers shouldn’t be pressured by exam results and league tables. More and more of us are expected to deliver on an endless range of targets.

“Such a competitive and individualistic outlook on life can prevent people from seeing the connection between one thing and another.

“Surely we need to make conversation and share our lives with one another to fuel community and we have to understand the wider implications of our actions.”

He said there was “little or no time for conversation about important matters such a politics, religion, society.

“Churches are perceived to be leisure activities for those who like that sort of thing rather than being the heartbeat of a community.”

Speaking to his congregation, who had assembled in the Emmaus Primary School near the murder scene, he said: “In the last few days our estate has been turned upside down - we just can’t get our minds around what has happened.

“It seems as if we have slipped into some bizarre parallel universe where basic rules about human beings connecting with one another have been suspended.

“What can we say or do? It has happened and we feel so powerless.”

The services are usually held at the Church of England’s St Cuthbert’s, which is in the crime scene and is still cordoned off.

This morning’s Eucharist was attended by scores of people and carried out with borrowed robes, candles and equipment from nearby St Mary the Virgin.

Rev Leslie implored people to focus on making time for others in their lives, saying: “When this awful event begins to recede, when the media and heavy police presence go away, what in the long-term will have changed?

“If we are to change society in just a small way we need to rebuild our lives and get a sense or proportion, to have time to think, listen and share.

“Community starts with us - it is bottom up and can’t be imposed by governments or the police, it can only be built by us.

“It comes from our hearts, it comes from within.”

Parishioners sang hymns for the community including ’Morning Has Broken’ and ’Love Divine’.

Yesterday,  nearly 40,000 football fans paid tribute to Everton-mad Rhys with a minute’s applause at Goodison Park.

Everton players, and their opponents Blackburn Rovers, wore black armbands as a mark of respect to the Rhys, who was shot close to the Fir Tree pub in Croxteth park by a BMX-riding youth police believe to be no older than 15.

Rhys’s parents, Melanie and Stephen, and his brother Owen, were on the pitch with Everton boss David Moyes for the minute’s appreciation.

Civil rights activist the Rev Jesse Jackson last night warned those harbouring Rhys Jones’s killers that they were conspirators to murder.

Rev Jackson, who spent yesterday in Liverpool touring the city’s new slavery museum, revealed had been in contact with Rhys’s family to offer his support.

The baptist minister, 65, said: “Violence begets violence, and hope begets hope.

“We’ve had contact with the relatives of Rhys Jones; we must work diligently to stop gun violence in this country. The numbers are still small enough to stop it here.

“We have reached out and shown a heartfelt sympathy for a simply awful murder - also, the killer of Jessie James in Manchester has not been found either.

“Those who collaborate to protect killers are conspirators; they have a moral obligation to tell us the names.

“Where there is violence, people must not provide sanctuary.

“Those killers will do it again unless they are caught - nobody has a moral obligation to protect those killers.

“We must stop the easy access to guns and drugs, and wipe out poverty, not wipe out the poor.

“We must urge the Government to tackle the significant flow of guns and access to guns and stop the flow of drugs and stop jobs going out of the country.

“It has been done to rebuild Israel and Kuwait; let’s do it to rebuild inner cities in the UK.”

On the Croxteth Park estate, police are trying to find a woman who was seen pushing a pram near the scene shortly before Rhys was shot.

Detective Superintendent David Kelly, the senior investigating officer, said the woman could potentially be a key witness.

He said: “We know from our enquiries there was a woman pushing a pram minutes before Rhys was killed and we believe she will have passed within close proximity to the killer.”

He added: “I ask for this woman to come forward to speak to us, and provide any information, however trivial she might think it is.

“We need as much detail about this killer as possible and she may be a key witness.

“She is described as wearing white wide-legged trousers with a dark tunic style top, almost like a smock.

“She had dark hair, possibly tied back and was pushing a dark coloured pram at about 7.25pm.”

Mr Kelly said that the bike-riding teenager who killed Rhys emerged at the back of the Fir Tree pub from an estate behind the actual pub.

He said that the boy, thought to be between 13 and 15, cycled at the back of the pub for a few minutes before firing three bullets in Rhys’ direction - one of which he said passed through his neck.

He added that one of the other bullets had smashed through two windows of a BMW in the car park.

Rhys, who police today said was walking home alone on Wednesday night before he was killed, might have been shot by a revolver.

Mr Kelly said this was a possibility because no spent cartridges have been found at the scene.

Despite extensive searches and the existence of CCTV footage the detective said officers have not yet established the killer’s exact position on the car park when he fired the three bullets.

Mr Kelly would not confirm the suggestion that some CCTV cameras weren’t working on the night of the murder.

He confirmed that the five teenagers arrested today are being held on suspicion of murder.

In a direct appeal to the killer’s family and friends, Mr Kelly added: “Somebody out there is very close to the killer.

“Somebody knows him and knows what he’s done. ”

Officers have been handing out leaflets in the area with a special number for young people to text information anonymously.

Police have said that they are examining an abandoned bicycle, found in an area with a different postcode to the shooting.