RHYS JONES was killed not because of Liverpool gang rivalry but by a lone gunman acting on his own impulses, it was claimed in court.

The jury at Liverpool Crown Court yesterday heard the closing speech of Gordon Harrison, barrister for 20-year-old defendant, and alleged Croxteth Crew member, James Yates.

Mr Harrison said the shooting of Rhys “tragic though it was and could hardly have been more devastating, does not have the hallmarks of gang-related activity”.

He told the jury: “It has all the hallmarks of a lone gunman on what lawyers call a folly of his own, mano-a-mano, against someone at the Fir Tree public house, plainly not Rhys Jones”.

The prosecution allege that Croxteth teenager Sean Mercer went to Croxteth Park’s Fir Tree pub and fired three times across the car park at alleged members of a Norris Green gang – Wayne Brady, Kevin Davies and a boy who cannot be named. Mr Harrison said: “I am not going to suggest there has not been trouble in Croxteth and Norris Green, of course there has. We submit that, if this had been a gang-related activity, you are not talking about highly sophisticated young men or supremely intellectual young men, is it likely that other alleged members of the Croxteth Crew sitting in this dock wouldn’t have shown the faintest interest in what was going on? Sheer voyeurism alone would have dragged them down to see the carnage.”

The prosecution claim Mercer used Yates’s gun to carry out the shooting.

The alleged murder weapon was found in the home of a Croxteth teenager, Boy C, a month after Rhys was killed.

Boy C went from being a suspect to a witness after he was offered immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony in court.

Mr Harrison said of the evidence of “very, very fortunate” Boy C that during his 4½ hours of “well-prepared, well-rehearsed and, at times, nauseating police interviews by those giggling and fawning police women” that were shown to the jury, there was no mention by the star witness of the gun belonging to his client.

TO FOLLOW the Rhys murder trial as it happens, go to www.liverpooldaily post.co.uk/rhysjonestrial