Sentencing remarks: R v Denver Walton
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 02 August 2019 |
| Court | Crown Court |
| Subject Matter | Sentencing Remarks |
R
-v-
Denver Walton
Manchester Crown Court
Sentencing Remarks of Mr Justice Bryan
2 August 2019
1. Denver Walton, you have been found guilty of the manslaughter of Tyrelle
Burke on 5 April 2019 and also possession of an offensive weapon, the
kitchen knife with which you inflicted the fatal stab wound. I must now
sentence you for those offences. You were 17 at the time of your offending
but are now 18.
2. Tyrelle, who at 20 years of age was a little older than you, was a good friend
of yours. On the night of the 3rd and into the 4th April you had slept over at
Tyrelle’s house together with a mutual friend of you both David Gamboa.
You had all decided to spent the evening and night doing drugs and chilling
out together. In this regard you had all taken the benzodiazepine alprazolam
(Xanax) as well as a drug “lean” which contains both codeine and
promethazine which comes in bottle form and which you mix with fruit juice
or the like. It makes you (as you put it) “slumpy”. Neither is available on
prescription in this country but sadly each is readily available on the streets
of this country.
3. By the early hours of 4th April you were all crashed out unconscious. It
appears that within your circle of friends it is common to perform pranks on
those who are unconscious which you video and then play back to them
when they regain consciousness.
4. So it was that by 4am you were awake and you took up a kitchen knife that
was apparently on Tyrelle’s bed side chest of drawers and cut him 7 times or
so across his leg. In fact your only recollection was “jabbing” him in the leg
with the knife, hardly a wise thing to do, but it is clear enough that you in
fact repeatedly cut him, which is no more comprehensible. You regarded this
as a joke and were to show him and others the footage the next night – he too
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