Teen admitted to killing Rhys after shooting, hears trial

THE teenager accused of murdering Rhys Jones admitted to the killing just minutes after the schoolboy was shot, a court heard yesterday.

Sean Mercer, 18, blasted three shots across the car park of the Fir Tree pub in Croxteth Park on August 22 last year, it was claimed. One left the 11-year-old bleeding to death while his desperate mother cradled him.

Yesterday, Liverpool Crown Court heard Mercer’s DNA was found on the bike used to flee the scene and that he admitted the killing when he arrived at another defendant’s house.

Neil Flewitt QC, for the prosecution, said a 16-year-old defendant known as Boy M “told the police that his grandmother answered the door to Sean Mercer, who said that he had just shot someone and that a kid had gone down”.

The jury also heard that a bike belonging to Mercer was found abandoned the day after the murder.

A cyclist, Leslie Shimmin, discovered it less than 250m from an industrial unit used by co-accused Melvin Coy, 25, of Croxteth, who denies assisting an offender.

It was not until six months later, when reading a local paper and watching the television news, that Shimmin realised the bike he found and took home to keep was what the police were searching for.

When detectives contacted the insurance firm that provided the bike to Mercer — a claim had been made after his previous one had been stolen — they asked for the serial number.

Mr Flewitt told the jury: “It will, perhaps, come as no surprise to you to learn that the serial number of the silver Specialised Hardrock mountain bike found by Mr Shimmin in Kirkby is the same as the serial number of the Specialised Hardrock mountain bike supplied to Sean Mercer in April 2007.”

The trial heard that Mercer, of Good Shepherd Close, Croxteth, rode to a friend’s house and made the confession minutes after Rhys’s shooting.

A series of calls between the seven accused were allegedly made and Mercer, Melvin Coy, Gary Kays, 25, Boy Q, 17, and James Yates, 20, then drove to Coy’s lock-up in nearby Kirkby. It is claimed that Mercer was then washed with petrol to remove gun shot residue. His bike, the court heard, was dumped nearby later that night.

The prosecution claim the killing was part of a gang war between the defendants’ Croxteth Crew and nearby Strand Gang from Norris Green.