Sentence for 15-year-old boy who killed elderly man to be reviewed

A 15-year-old boy who killed a man in a Leicestershire park will have his sentence reviewed because it may have been too lenient.

The child, who cannot be named because of his age, was handed a term of seven years' detention in June for the manslaughter of 80-year-old Bhim Kohli.

It will be reviewed by the Court of Appeal under the unduly lenient sentence scheme, the Attorney General's Office has said.

A 13-year-old girl escaped a custodial sentence for the same offence. She was aged 12 at the time of the incident on 1 September last year and was given a three-year youth rehabilitation order.

Both children had denied their part in killing the elderly dog walker, who died in hospital the day after the attack.

But they were convicted in April by a jury of manslaughter, while the boy, who was aged 14 at the time of the killing, was cleared of murder.

Leicester Crown Court heard Mr Kohli was racially abused when the boy pushed, kicked and punched him, while the girl encouraged him by recording parts of the attack while laughing.

Mr Kohli was found lying on the ground in Franklin Park in Braunstone Town, near Leicester, and died the next evening of a spinal cord injury.

He had been following a familiar routine, walking his beloved dog Rocky to the local park, just yards away from his home. But when he arrived at the park, he was attacked.

The jury heard the girl had pointed Mr Kohli out to the boy, and who then subjected the victim to a violent assault.

High Court judge Mr Justice Turner called it a "cowardly and violent attack" on an elderly man who did "nothing to deserve" what happened to him.

He told the boy: "What you did was not one single attack which you immediately regretted, but two separate violent outbursts."

The judge accepted, while the girl had encouraged the boy's behaviour, she did not know he would use "anything like the level of violence he did".

His daughter, Susan Kohli, who found her father lying on the ground following the attack, has said it was hard to find forgiveness for her father's killers, regardless of their ages.

"Why should they be given grace for what they have done?" asked Ms Kohli. "They chose to attack a defenceless pensioner and for that I cannot give them any of my sympathy."

Speaking outside Leicester Crown Court after the sentencing, Ms Kohli said she was "angry and disappointed" the teenagers' sentence did not reflect the severity of the crime.

"The death of my dad has left a hole in our family, a hole that can never be filled because of the actions of two teenagers on that Sunday evening last September," she said.

"I believe on that day the two teenagers made a choice. The teenage boy chose to attack my dad and the girl chose to film him being attacked. They knew what they were doing."

She added: "When they are released, they still have their full lives ahead of them. They can rebuild their lives. We can't."

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