‘Clockwork Orange’ killers caged - Binge-drinking teenager guilty of homophobic attack on civil servant Ian Baynham
Published: 28 January 2011
by DAVID ST GEORGE
A DRUNKEN teenager who killed a stranger in a “Clockwork Orange”-style homophobic attack in Trafalgar Square has been jailed for seven years.
Former public school pupil Ruby Thomas, 17 at the time and now 19, was a self-confessed binge-drinker who had previously been in court for beating up a bus driver in the West End.
Thomas grinned as she stamped on the head of “openly gay” civil servant Ian Baynham after calling him and a friend “f..…… faggots” as they walked near South Africa House, in September 2009 the Old Bailey heard.
When Mr Baynham, 62, remonstrated about the mindless abuse, he was felled by a punch from sports student Joel Alexander, accompanying Thomas and her friend Rachel Burke on a night out. My Baynham suffered severe brain damage and skull fractures and died in hospital 18 days later.
“Eye witnesses were shocked by the viciousness unleashed and one onlooker likened the level of violence to a scene from cult film
A Clockwork Orange” said prosecutor Brian Altman QC.
From Anerley, south-east London, Thomas, and Alexander, 20, of Thornton Heath, were convicted of manslaughter. Burke, 19, of Three Oaks, East Sussex, was cleared on that charge earlier but convicted of affray.
Alexander was jailed for six years and Burke for two.
Judge Richard Hawkins QC described Thomas as a “drunken lout” when he passed sentence.
In January 2008 she received a nine-month community punishment order for assault and carrying a bladed article. She was with a gang of drunken girls who attacked the driver of a night bus near Trafalgar Square.
Thomas had blamed drink and was treated leniently by the court as it was her first offence.
Some of Mr Baynham’s family were in court. A keen angler, he was described as “witty and eloquent”. He “loved people” and was fatally struck down “on the streets of the London he loved so much,” they said.