Life for youth who boasted how he murdered victim with knife

Bricklayer Danny Parr even bragged about the killing and showed the blade to friends afterwards saying: “You can see how far it’s gone in.”

A jury at Sheffield Crown Court was unable to reach a decision in January this year and Parr, who was 19 at the time of the killing, had to face a retrial.

After the January trial he intimidated witnesses who were due to give evidence at the second hearing from his prison cell, threatening them with a sledgehammer and said when he got out “there was going to be a war started”.

He was unanimously found guilty of murder by the new jury on Monday.

Parr, now 21, knifed 19-year-old Jamie Stuart as he walked home from a 21st birthday party. Mr Stuart was stabbed four times, one of the blows so fierce it went through his breastbone and into his heart.

Jailing him for life, Judge Roger Keen told Parr: “Your behaviour was cold-blooded and you boasted about it afterwards well-knowing you had left the victim seriously injured.”

He said Parr then “concocted a pack of lies” to claim he had acted in self-defence and he had “never shown a shred of remorse”.

His position was aggravated because after the first trial: “You planned and plotted revenge against those who had the temerity to give evidence for the prosecution.”

Parr and Mr Stuart barely knew each other before the fatal stabbing on Holgate Avenue in the Parson Cross area of Sheffield in the early hours of July 23 last year.

Mr Stuart, of Orchard Close, Ecclesfield, was on his way home from the party when he came across Parr and Parr’s cousin, Connor Jessop.

Parr, who was wearing gloves and had armed himself, admitted having drunk 12 cans of lager and some vodka.

After the stabbing, Parr sent a text to a friend, Sean Pryor, which read: “That lad who were with Kyle earlier. I pierced him four times bro. What you saying? Need to talk tomorrow.”

He told his friend: “I killed 
Jamie last night. I’m going to hand myself in. I didn’t mean to kill him.”

Mr Pryor asked him why he had stabbed Jamie and he replied: “Because I was drunk.”

Another friend told the police Parr seemed to “get a buzz out of it” before he handed himself in at a police station.

The victim backed away after the first blow and begged Parr “please don’t” but he carried on knifing him.

Parr, of Broom Close, Bramley, Rotherham, had denied murdering Mr Stuart but admitted his manslaughter. He further admitted possessing an offensive weapon, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and threatening to take revenge.

The victim died later in Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital.

Parr told the court he did not want to stab Jamie but “panicked”. He said: “I just involved myself in a situation I didn’t need to be involved in.”

He said Jamie and his cousin Connor had been in a dispute earlier that day and Connor had originally been carrying the knife.

He said: “Connor had it in his hand because he was going to stab a car tyre. He usually has a knife on him at all times. I took the knife off him and it was in my left pocket.”

After the hearing, the victim’s parents, Dawn Grey and David Stuart, who are both on anti-depressants, said they were “devastated” by their loss.

Miss Grey said that “part of her died with my son” and it was an “ongoing nightmare from which she had not awoken”.