A thug who mowed down an innocent woman in his car while aiming at a group of men avoided a longer prison term in 2019 due to a loophole in firearms sentencing laws.
Stephen McHugh, 28, was convicted of the murder of 22-year-old Rebecca Steer at Stafford Crown Court yesterday after a horrific incident in Oswestry, Shropshire, on October 9 last year. McHugh, originally from Fazakerley, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 18 years for the senseless killing.
A jury had heard McHugh had snorted around eight lines of cocaine and drunk six beers and 10 double shots of spirits before mounting his Volvo S60 car onto a footpath outside a takeaway restaurant. Miss Steer was hit and dragged under the vehicle, suffering "catastrophic" injuries.
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McHugh admitted manslaughter and denied murder, but was convicted of the more serious charge after a two week trial.
However McHugh may have been either subject to licence conditions or even still in prison if his previous conviction, for possessing a shotgun without a certificate, had progressed in a different way.
Back in May, 2020, Liverpool Crown Court heard police had begun chasing a suspected stolen Volkswagen Golf car spotted in Tower Hill, Kirkby, on September 3, 2019. The vehicle sped off and was chased to Rainbow Drive, Melling, where it smashed into a parked vehicle, according to ECHO reports.
Two men got out and ran, and were never caught. However, on the back seat police found a stash of deadly weapons including a sawn-off shotgun, a long-barrelled shotgun, two shotgun cartridges and a shotgun bolt.
The sawn-off shotgun was forensically tested and experts found the DNA of McHugh, then aged 25, on the weapon. McHugh was arrested and answered no comment in his police interviews.
Sawn-off shotguns are considered prohibited weapons under sentencing legislation, and are not legal to own no matter what firearms licence the owner may possess.
After the DNA results, McHugh was initially charged with possession of a prohibited firearm, which carries a mandatory minimum term of five years in prison. If this sentence had been passed, depending on whether he served time on remand before his sentencing hearing, he could have still been in prison, or recently released on licence, at the time of Miss Steer's death.
However his lawyers pointed out that the prosecution could not prove whether McHugh had handled the shotgun before it's barrel was illegally shortened, a suggestion the Crown Prosecution Service were unable to argue.
Long barrelled shotguns are legal to own with the correct firearms licence and the charge for possessing a one without such a licence, while likely to result in some prison time, does not carry a mandatory minimum sentence.
At the time, Christopher Hopkins, prosecuting, said: "We accept we could not say for certain when this item was in the defendant's possession, accordingly, it could have been in a time when it was in an unshortened form."
Mr Hopkins said police experts found his DNA on the inner fore-end and barrel hinge of the weapon - the area where the gun breaks.
He said: "On that basis, the Crown concede it could have been at an earlier stage it was in this defendant's possession."
However, Mr Hopkins did argue the court could draw an inference from McHugh's criminal record, how the shotgun came to be found and the fact that it was later sawn-off, that his possession of the gun was to do with criminal activity.
McHugh, who pleaded guilty to possessing the firearm without a certificate, had six previous convictions for 10 offences, including possession of cocaine with intent to supply in 2012, when he was only 17.
He was jailed for two years and three months, meaning he would have served just over a year before being released on licence.
After his release he moved to Oswestry, with fatal consequences for Liverpool John Moores University Student Miss Steer, from Llanymech in Powys. The jury in Stafford heard how she was caught up when McHugh drove at a group of pedestrians in response to an earlier "altercation" after they took exception to his "erratic driving".
Mr Justice Andrew Baker, passing sentence, said McHugh reacted to by treating pedestrians "like they were human skittles".
He said: "It could so easily have been much worse for the general group on the pavement. For Becky Steer, as everyone in court knows, it could not have been worse."
The court heard how Miss Steer wanted to become a detective and was in the final year of a criminal justice course at John Moores.
In a victim personal statement, Miss Steer's mum described her as the "most loving, talented and kind-hearted person who you could have wished to know".
The judge said of Ms Steer: "In her mother's words she was 'flying' through her course and had great ambitions and a future full of potential."
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