A TEENAGER who killed a father with a crossbow was locked up for seven years on Monday.

Daley Bibby, 16, had been cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter by a jury at Maidstone Crown Court in December.

But Judge Warwick McKinnon said he rejected the youth’s evidence that the crossbow had gone off accidentally as "a fantastic proposition".

He added: "I am quite satisfied to the criminal standard that you deliberately fired the crossbow and you knew it would cause a really serious injury."

However, Judge McKinnon said the jury’s conviction of manslaughter must have been based on provocation.

"This was the jury’s merciful finding, that there was provocation in what otherwise would have been a clear case of murder."

Bibby, who was flanked by two dock officers, was told that his sentence was significantly less than what it would have been had he been an adult. He was also sentenced to 12 months concurrent for affray.

David Nathan QC, defending, had argued that it was not a case of brash hooliganism or motivated by a desire for revenge.

"This was a piece of very bad judgement. Brandishing a crossbow at someone is an inherently dangerous act and was wholly unreasonable," he told the court.

However, Mr Nathan added that he did not seek to underestimate the gravity of the case. He also urged that the background leading up to the killing was "quite extraordinary".

The prosecution had alleged that Bibby, then aged 15, fired the crossbow bolt into the chest of Wayne Phillips, while backed up by his brother Danny and friend Terry Enever, both 18, 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, all denied murder and affray, claiming that Mr Phillips, 30, made threats and lunged at them with a knife.

Judge McKinnon said that Mr Phillips’s aggravating actions angered Bibby.

"A combination of youth, immaturity and a desire not to be seen backing down and losing face caused you to go back and do what you did when something caused you to do that final, terrible deed," he told the court, packed with friends and relatives of both Bibby and Mr Phillips.

"You were determined to demonstrate that you would not be pushed around by anybody."

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 at the trial, said Daley Bibby took exception to Mr Phillips intervening in his telephone calls to Miss Atkinson during the evening of March 25 last year.

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 battery to a truck that Daley Bibby had driven there. Bibby phoned his older 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.

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 the court in her evidence how she saw Daley Bibby fire the bolt into her boyfriend’s chest.

Despite his horrific injury father-of-one 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.

Mr Nathan spoke of Bibby’s immaturity and said Bibby’s size "blinded one to just how young he is". However, since being in custody in Feltham Bibby had made progress and the full impact of what he had done was beginning to sink in.

Judge McKinnon said he had taken into consideration this immaturity, lack of previous convictions for actual violence, the pre-sentence report and, above all else, his age.

"You were only 15 at the time and that principally causes me to pass a significantly lesser sentence than if you were in your early 20s and fully mature."

The jury of six men and six women reached unanimous verdicts after deliberating for about eight hours. Danny Bibby and Enever were cleared of all charges.

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

Detective Inspector Dave Withers, of Kent Police Major Crime Department, said at the end of the trial: "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."