On a summer evening in 2015, 18-year-old Vinny Waddington was shot dead.
Vinny was pillion passenger on a motorbike when he was shot by a men inside an Audi A3 car on Banks Lane, Garston, at 8.47pm on July 14, 2015. Less than a year later, two men were handed life sentences for his murder.
Six years on from that trial, the ECHO looks at the motor-mouthed street thug whose unguarded rant to his auntie helped lock him up for life and his quieter, heroin dealing accomplice who were tried, convicted and jailed for Vinny's murder.
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Luke Kendrick and Ryan Bate were convicted unanimously by a jury at Liverpool Crown Court, after Vinny was rammed off a scrambler motorbike and shot in Banks Road, Garston. The killers had fired the fatal shotgun blast from the driver's window of Kendrick's Audi A3, before fleeing on foot when the motorbike got stuck under the wheels of their car.
Kendrick and Bate already had extensive criminal records, with Kendrick having only been released from prison around two weeks earlier after a conviction for racially aggravated harassment.
The erratic and frequently argumentative known gang member had 25 previous convictions for 44 offences, which stretched back to the age of 12. Bate, who came across as quieter and less combustible in court and had no previous convictions for violence, was, however, a convicted heroin dealer and car thief.
Kendrick's fiery temper erupted multiple times during the trial, including in shocking scenes where he goaded and laughed at Vinny's grieving relatives from the dock, as they sat in the public gallery of the courtroom. He also regularly launched into foul mouthed tirades against his own lawyers, on one occasion telling junior counsel Saul Brody: "F*** off you c***, you don't represent me yous are sacked, you do f*** all for me."
He also ranted at High Court judge Mr Justice King about being denied breakfast in HMP Liverpool before being transferred to court. The exchanges resulted in a surreal direction from the judge which allowed his legal team to pass him a pre-packaged sandwich in the cells under Liverpool Crown Court each morning.
Kendrick also moaned to Mr Justice King when he was moved to HMP Altcourse part-way into the trial, following an attack by another inmate which left him with two black eyes. Complaining his clothes had not been transferred with him, Kendrick told the judge: "Would you go to work if you didn’t have clean boxers? No, you would refuse to get out of bed so why should I.”
Nigel Power, QC, prosecuting the case, described Kendrick as "controlling and unpleasant" and suggested he was "not a man to say no to". The jury were told "his dominating personality pressured Bate into joining him in killing Vinny".
During the trial, Kendrick’s mum, Pamela Kendrick, gave evidence and told the jury her son had “a big mouth” and “could go off on one". She added: “He says things he doesn’t mean, he’s always sorry afterwards. He would say I’m sorry mum, I didn’t mean it."
The true motive of the shooting was never fully established, but Kendrick claimed he had been threatened and shot at by men on motorbikes earlier on the day of the killing. A revealing piece of evidence was captured by Sergeant Craig Baker, who turned up to arrest Kendrick at the home of his aunt, Tina Walker, around three hours after the shooting.
Sgt Baker placed his police body-camera on a table and left it running, as Kendrick ran his mouth and made extraordinary comments about the events of that day. Kendrick appeared to gloat about Vinny's death, saying: "These kids today, pulling up on crossers, pulling a gun on me, pulling a machete on me.
"And then they must have been having a good f****** laugh at me them, 'Ah we've just terrored Luke'. Ah but look, look what's happened now mate, you're dead, ha ha ha ha I'm f***** made up, stick that on the camera."
Even more significantly, he described events only someone at the crime scene would have known, telling his aunt: "I’ve hit them off the bike Tina, they both jumped up off the floor, they both ran into this garden and started jumping over back gardens and that’s the last I seen of them, but the bike was stuck under the car, I’ve jumped out of the car and I’ve ran.”
After the trial, the ECHO reported how Kendrick had spent years causing misery in the community of Garston, and had been a member of a racist gang. In 2008 he was one of 10 yobs slapped with Anti-social Behaviour Orders (ASBOS).
At the time around 140 people gave evidence against the gang, who police say subjected parts of Garston to threats, racial abuse and racially motivated attacks. The Asbo meant the then gang members were banned from associating with each other, going into designated areas of Garston, approaching named individuals, and behaving in a way which caused harassment, alarm or distress.
Detailed evidence was not heard in open court about Kendrick's upbringing, but during his sentencing hearing his barrister, Charles Miskin, QC, said his client had a "shockingly poor childhood" with "a long and complex history of trauma, substance abuse and disorder. He suggested Kendrick's personality traits "disrupt all areas of his life."
Ryan Bate, however, was described as a regular cannabis user involved in petty crime, and was in fact wanted for a theft related offence at the time of the murder. His evidence suggested tension with Kendrick, who he claimed was "not his friend".
He said that only knew Kendrick as a weed dealer who supplied him with cannabis "nearly every night". Part of his defence rested on a freak injury to his toe after he dropped a heavy weight on it while weight-lifting in his dad's garage, which he said meant he physically could not have fled the scene.
He told the jury: "Why would I put in myself in that position over Kendrick who is not my friend?.. I had cut my toe off six weeks before why would I put myself in any bad circumstances over him, he causes trouble with everyone, I would just have been sat in the car like a plant-pot."
The pair were both jailed for life; Bate receiving a 24-year minimum term and Kendrick 25 years. The court heard victim impact statements which described Vinny as "not the type to go out and cause trouble", while a letter from his college said the 18-year-old was "polite, respectful and intelligent."
A statement from Vinny's father, also read in court, said: “When Vincent died I died with him. When I close my eyes the nightmares come." But Kendrick again disrupted proceedings, muttering from the dock: "I can't be a*** listening to all this.” When led out of court he smiled and held his thumbs up to Vinny's family, who did not rise to the bait.
Bate was sentenced to life with a minimum of 24 years in prison, while Kendrick received a 25-year minimum sentence. In front of a packed public gallery, judge Mr Justice Timothy King said we would "never know" who was driving the car which struck Vinny and who fired the fatal shot.
He said: “No words of mine can express the grief and sense of bereavement suffered and that will continue to be suffered by his family at his untimely death.”
