14-year prison term for machete-wielding killer of celebrity minder

A machete-wielding thug had been jailed for 14 years for killing a celebrity minder.

Ricky Hayden, 27, was wearing just a pair of boxer shorts when he rushed outside his home after spotting two youths on a moped he suspected of eyeing up his brother’s scooter.

Mr Hayden’s family and friends clapped and shouted “yes” as the killer, Tommy Roome, received his sentence with a further five years to be served on extended licence.

They had earlier vented their anger outside court by waving banners and placards and saying justice had not been done.

Prosecutors said Mr Hayden, his 21-year-old brother Perry and their father, 55, were confronted by Roome and Tarrell Hinds, then 19, who were armed with two large machetes.

Jurors were told the pair had gone to Gibbfield Close that day to look for two other brothers with whom Roome was involved in an ongoing dispute.

Roome, now 20, of Chadwell Heath, eat London, was found not guilty of murdering Mr Hayden by a jury at the Old Bailey, but convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Hinds, also 20, of Chigwell, was cleared of involvement in the killing, in Romford, east London, on September 13 2016.

Earlier outside court, Mr Hayden’s mother Suzanne Hedges said: “We are here today to let people know this system is rubbish.

“They need to get rid of the jury and have people who know what DNA is, not people who fall asleep.

“We are hard-working people. We got no justice.”

In a victim impact statement read in court, she said the family had been “crushed” by her son’s death.

She said: “Ricky was our boy. He was kind, caring and honest with a cheeky streak.”

She last spoke to him on the phone when he called her up just to say “I love you”.

Ms Hedges described listening to the “sickening” details of the case in court and the way her son was attacked while he was “vulnerable, unarmed, unprepared, confused and wearing nothing but his underwear”.

The teaching assistant added: “I would have given my own life in a heartbeat just to have saved him the pain and fear he must have felt at that moment.”

The court heard Roome had 25 previous convictions, including for possession of an offensive weapon.

Michael Turner QC, mitigating, suggested the jury had convicted him of manslaughter on the basis that he “inflicted the fatal injury but without intent and without realising he was causing really serious harm”.

He said: “We accept of course Tommy Roome’s own evidence that he regularly carried a machete but he has never used that weapon and on the jury’s verdict, there must have been an element of self defence.”

The court had heard that Mr Hayden, 27, had worked in security at ITV and acted as a bodyguard for high-profile celebrities including footballer Peter Crouch and model Abbey Clancy.

Sentencing Roome, Judge Philip Katz QC said it was a “shocking” killing witnessed by numerous people.

He told Roome he showed a “compete absence of any compassion” for killing a well-respected man who “unlike you made something of his life”.

He said: “I am sure that your use of a knife was not a sudden or spontaneous reaction to a meaningful threat of violence from the Haydens.

“I am sure when you stabbed him Ricky was unarmed wearing boxer shorts and bare footed.

“In the circumstances you knew perfectly well that using such a weapon to stab anyone might easily cause lethal injury.

“I shall of course be loyal to the verdicts of the jury.”

He said his actions came “within a hair’s breadth of the crime of murder”.

Kevin Malamba, also 20, from Southwark, south London, who admitted perverting the course of justice, was sentenced to 30 months in detention.

The cheers and jubilation at the sentence continued outside court as Ms Hedges told reporters Roome could “rot in hell”.

His father, Paul Hayden, said: “We have got to get these knives off the streets. My son died for nothing.”