Teenager jailed for life after murdering man on Christmas Day

A teenager has been jailed for life after murdering a father-of-two in a revenge stabbing on Christmas Day.

Kersharn Dockeray-Barnett, who was 17 at the time, was found guilty by a jury of murdering Reece Connor, 29, near Crown Island in Nottingham by stabbing him once in the chest with a knife on December 25 last year.

The defendant, now 18, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 19 years at Nottingham Crown Court on Monday.

Mr Connor’s partner, Courtney Newton, read a victim impact statement to the court saying that “Christmas will never be the same again” for her and her children.

She said: “My Reece could always make me laugh and would do anything to make me smile. Boxing Day 2023 is a day I will never forget.

“I’m now a single parent struggling emotionally and financially to bring up my kids. He was my rock and I was his. I miss his smile, I miss my Reece. Forever and always, my love.”

Dockeray-Barnett, of Marchwood Close, Nottingham, who wore a light blue tracksuit, stood in the dock as his sentence was read out by the judge and then blew a kiss to his family sat in the public gallery.

The court heard that Dockeray-Barnett claimed he had used the knife in self-defence, which the jury rejected, following a previous encounter with Mr Connor in an underpass where the deceased had been the “aggressor”.

You have deprived two boys of their father. And they and his partner found out the devastating news of his death on Boxing Day, a time when they should all have been together

Prosecution barrister John Lloyd-Jones KC said: “It is a fair inference that on that night, Kersharn Dockery-Barnett was angry following events in the underpass and he sought revenge.”

Judge Nirmal Shant KC said to the defendant: “There appears to have been some form of disagreement between you. I find on the evidence that you went to seek him out and at the end of that encounter, you killed him.

“It is plain to me that the second encounter came by because you wanted to teach him a lesson in relation to the first.

“You have deprived two boys of their father. And they, and his partner, found out the devastating news of his death on Boxing Day, a time when they should all have been together.”