Parents devastated by brutal murder of son

The parents of a young man savagely murdered by a teenage car thief have spoken of their devastation at their son’s loss.

Musician Gavin O’Connor, 22, was sleeping on the back seat of his car after leaving a concert in the early hours of the morning in June 2011 when Conor McClelland, then aged 19, broke into it and drove off.

McClelland stopped the car some distance away, fetched a number of rocks from the roadside, and smashed his victim’s skull in before dragging him on to the road and driving over him in an attempt to make his injuries look like a car accident.