A TEENAGER who killed a father with a crossbow has been cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter and affray.

Sentence on 16-year-old Daley Bibby, who can now be identified after a court order was lifted, was adjourned for reports until January 24.

There were gasps from the public gallery at Maidstone Crown Court as Bibby, his brother Danny and Terry Enever, both 18, were all cleared of murdering Wayne Phillips.

Danny Bibby and Enever walked free after they were also acquitted of affray. Daley Bibby was remanded in custody.

Detective Insp Dave Withers, of Kent Police Major Crime Department, said afterwards: “In consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, we have put the charges before a jury based on the evidence and a thorough investigation and we support the verdict reached.

“It does concern me that despite legislation restricting the access of crossbows to people under 17, such young people could get hold of this kind of lethal weapon so easily and with tragic consequences for Wayne Phillips’s family.

“They should not have been in possession of it. They are such lethal weapons. They are so accurate and deadly.”

The prosecution had alleged that the youngest brother, then aged 15, fired the crossbow bolt into the unarmed victim’s chest while backed up by the two others who were wielding baseball bats.

The Bibbys, who live with their father in a flat over his dry cleaning business in Welling High Street, and Enever, of Harland Avenue, Sidcup, denied all the charges, claiming that Mr Phillips, 30, made threats and lunged at them with a knife.

The violent clash centred around Daley Bibby’s on-off relationship with 17-year-old Nicole Atkinson, who was at a flat in Patterson Court, Temple Hill, with her aunt Joanne Brunton - Mr Phillips’s girlfriend - and her sister Claire.

Simon Russell Flint, QC, prosecuting, said Daley Bibby took exception to Mr Phillips intervening in his telephone calls to Miss Atkinson during the evening of March 25.

At one point Mr Phillips, of St Edmunds Road, Dartford, took the phone from Miss Atkinson and told Bibby that she was no longer interested in him.

Bibby and Enever, said the prosecutor, then went to the flat armed with baseball bats. Bare-chested Mr Phillips chased them down the stairs.

Mr Phillips took a screwdriver and disconnected the batter to a truck that Daley Bibby had driven there. Bibby phoned his brother and asked him to collect them.

Danny Bibby drove to Dartford in a Ford Escort he had just bought, accompanied by two friends. Shortly after midnight Daley Bibby phoned the flat and he and Mr Phillips continued to be abusive to each other.

Bibby, said the prosecutor, threatened Mr Phillips that he was going to be dead that night and told him he was making his coffin. “Wayne, you are going to be dead,” he said. “You don’t know who I am.”

There was another incident when, according to some witnesses, Danny Bibby twice tried to run over Mr Phillips and Micky Atkinson, who was also in the flat.

The teenagers went to Welling but then returned to collect the truck. By this time Daley Bibby had put the crossbow in the car - loaded and primed for firing, said Mr Russell Flint.

Joanne Brunton heard them return and Mr Phillips went down the steps from the flat to confront them. Miss Brunton told how she saw Daley Bibby fire the bolt into her boyfriend’s chest.

Mr Phillips managed to stagger up the stairs. He fell through the open door and lay on his back. Paramedics arrived at about 2.10am and carried Mr Phillips in a chair to the ambulance.

On the way to hospital, he gasped: “I am going to die, I am going to die. I have an eight-year-old.” He named Daley Bibby as his attacker.

At the hospital attempts were made to save him, but he died soon after 4am. The crossbow and the baseball bats have never been found.

The jury of six men and six women reached unanimous verdicts after deliberating for about eight hours.

Adjourning sentence, Judge Warwick McKinnon said: “I am conscious of Daley Bibby’s age and his need to know what his fate is.”

The judge praised jurors and released them for further service for 10 years.