London - A teenage thug who killed a father with a single punch and mocked him on Facebook was jailed for just three and a half years on Friday.
Connor Jary was already on bail for breaking the jaws of two other men when he punched Calvin McLellan, 30, to the ground, causing catastrophic head injuries that eventually killed him.
Jary, 19, fled the scene but minutes later he joked about the attack on Facebook, writing: "Dropped some lad with a dig … sent him snoring hahaha."
On Friday he hung his head at Newcastle Crown Court as his victim’s sister Mandy Douglas called him a "horrible human being" and said: "You are nothing but a bully destroying other people’s happiness while you go around thinking you are Mr Big."
"You have not just killed my brother, you have killed our whole family."
"Whatever sentence you get, we have got life … in my eyes you are a murderer, even if you aren’t in the eyes of the law."
Jary, an apprentice joiner, pleaded guilty to manslaughter but is likely to be freed early next year because he has already spent two years in custody.
He was initially jailed for grievous bodily harm as Mr McLellan, a chef, suffered devastating injuries but survived – only to die nine months later.
Campaigners condemned the sentence as too lenient and demanded a change in the law for "one punch manslaughter" cases. When the attack took place in August 2016 Jary was on bail for breaking the jaws of two men after they refused to let him into their home to wash his hands.
Jary was waiting outside a restaurant in South Shields, South Tyneside, in the early hours when Mr McLellan and a female companion walked past.
Words were exchanged before Jary and some of his friends followed them down an alley.
The court heard Mr McLellan turned to face Jary, who hit the stranger once in the mouth, causing him to fall and hit his head on the ground.
Jary went almost immediately on Facebook. His posts included the comments: "Dropped some lad in a dig. Smacked him once and he is on the floor snoring."
In April last year Mr McLellan died from respiratory failure and bronchial pneumonia, which a Home Office pathologist concluded was directly caused by the blow he suffered from Jary.
In February last year Jary was jailed for two years for GBH and a further 12 months for the earlier attacks. Now Judge Paul Sloan QC has deducted the two years he has already served in custody from his latest sentence – meaning he must serve just 18 months in a young offender institution.
Maxine Robinson-Curl, from campaign group One Punch North East, who lost her son in a similar attack, described such lenient sentences for single-punch killings as ‘ridiculous’.