Liverpool Crown Court 100
A GUN allegedly used to kill schoolboy Rhys Jones replicated the wounds inflicted in his shooting when fired in tests, a court heard today.
Football-mad Rhys, 11, was gunned down in the car park of the Fir Tree pub in Croxteth Park, Liverpool, on August 22 last year.
He was hit by one of three bullets blasted at members of Norris Green gang the Nogga Dogz by opposing Crocky Crew gang member Sean Mercer, 18, it is claimed.
The bullet entered Rhys’s back slightly above his left shoulder blade and exited through the front right side of his neck.
Today, a murder jury at Liverpool Crown Court heard the bullet hit Rhys “partially or fully sideways-on”.
Neil Flewitt QC, for the prosecution, said the bullet produced a “keyhole effect” on Rhys’s body and tests on the .455 Smith and Wesson replicated it.
He said: “The scientist is satisfied that the damage to the back of the shirt is a bullet entry hole.
“It is not, however, a neat round hole as might be expected from a bullet fired directly from a rifled barrel.
“The bullet appears to have struck Rhys Jones partially or fully sideways-on producing a ’keyhole’ effect.
“This is the result of the bullet tumbling nose-over-base in flight rather that flying nose first in a stabilised manner.
“It is the rifling in the barrel that normally stabilises a bullet.
“A bullet tumbling in this manner is usually due to the bullet being undersized or having been discharged from a smooth-bore barrel or from a barrel with worn rifling or having been deflected by striking or passing through some intermediate target.
“The scientist used the revolver to test-fire three of the .45 Colt cartridges found with it.
“His tests revealed that the bullets produced the same distinctive ’keyhole’ effect that he had identified on Rhys Jones’s football shirt.”
He added that the results seemed to be caused because the bullet was undersized by 0.08mm and the rifling of the revolver was worn.
Mr Flewitt told the jury that police recovered the bicycle used by the gunman to flee the Fir Tree pub and it was linked directly to Mercer, of Good Shepherd Close, Croxteth.
He said Mercer got the satin silver Specialized Hardrock mountain bike in April last year after his previous bike was stolen.
Police got another of the Hardrock bikes and asked a forensic specialist to compare it with the CCTV of the gunman escaping the murder scene. Officers also asked for the serial number from the insurance company that provided the new bike.
“He couldn’t find any difference” said Mr Flewitt.
Images of the bike were released to the media and produced “an almost immediate result”.
The jury heard that Leslie Shimmin saw the bike on the TV news and in the local press and realised he had found the frame of the bike the day after Rhys’s murder.
He discovered it while cycling with his sons very close to an industrial unit used by co-accused Melvin Coy, 25, in Kirkby.
Mr Flewitt said: “On a small overgrown piece of waste ground, Mr Shimmin spotted the frame of a bicycle that appeared to have been hidden under a bush.”
