Hoodie gang gunman Sean Mercer has been told he will serve a minimum of 22 years behind bars for the murder of schoolboy Rhys Jones.
After the end of the trial at Liverpool Crown Court Judge Stephen Irwin branded Mercer "a coward" and said his crime was beneath contemp'
Petty criminal Mercer, 18, showed no emotion as Mr Justice Irwin told him: "Rhys died at your hands, his death was a tragedy for him, a tragedy for his family and a waste of a young life."
A member of the "Croccy Crew" hoodie gang, Mercer shot Rhys while he walked home from football practice in Croxteth, Liverpool, on 22nd August last year.
He missed his intended victims a member of a rival gang walking in a pub car park, and hit Rhys in the neck with one of three bullets.
Fellow gang members James Yates, 20, and Nathan Quinn, 18, of Croxteth; Gary Kays, 26, and Melvin Coy, 25, of West Derby, Liverpool, and Boy M, 16, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were convicted unanimously of assisting an offender after they helped Mercer evade the police for months. Boy K, who can now be named as Dean Kelly, 17, of Croxteth, was also convicted today of four related charges.
Kays and Coy were both jailed for seven years for trying to help Mercer cover the crime after he went to Boy M's house. The others will be sentenced later.
Rhys' father, supermarket manager Stephen Jones, said: "Finally justice has been done. It's not the final chapter, but now we can begin the challenge of rebuilding our lives."
Meanwhile, Merseyside's anti-gun crime head has revealed that Sean Mercer, the convicted killer of Rhys Jones, had been stopped 80 times in three years by police.
Mercer was kept under a close eye because of his close ties with the Croxteth Crew according to Det Chf Supt Steve Moore, head of The Matrix Unit.
Even though police believe Mercer was a low ranking member of the group, he was still able to obtain a gun in only 30 minutes.
However, even with his gang involvement, Police never felt that the youth, 17 at the time of the Rhys' death, was capable of killing.
Mercer convicted of murdering the 11-year-old boy in August 2007, along with six others convicted of offences including perverting the course of justice.
Det Chief Supt Moore said: "Since 2004 we had stopped Mercer on 80 occasions, sometimes just to ask what he was doing in a particular area, other times he would have been stopped and checked.
"But there was very little in his past to make us think that he would be capable of committing this type of murder.
"He certainly was not an out of control individual. He was not a leading member of the Croxteth Crew, he was a low level figure.
"We don't know if, for their particular gang, having a gun is seen as kudos, this is not an organised crime group.
"But it seems no matter how high or low you are in a gang you can potentially get your hands on a gun."
Det Chief Supt Moore does think other members of the groups hierarchy were involved, including fellow convict James Yates, 20.
Mr Moore said: "We are not talking about the Mafia here but there is a pecking order.
"We believe Yates to be slightly higher up in the rankings than Mercer."
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