Ian Tomlin: Two men who murdered neighbour who complained about drug dealing jailed for life

Baseball bat split in ‘extraordinarily vicious’ attack

Gary Beech (left) and Michael Swan (right) were jailed for life for murdering neighbour Ian Tomlin (Metropolitan Police)

Two men who brutally murdered a man who complained about their drug dealing on a London estate have been jailed for life.

Police said 46-year-old Ian Tomlin had repeatedly challenged Gary Beech and Michael Swan in the months leading up to his death.

After Mr Tomlin found them meeting in his Battersea flat block on 17 October, he confronted them and was beaten and stabbed to death.

Beech, 48, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 21 years on Friday. Swan, 46, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 19 years at the same hearing.

Both men were convicted of murder at an Old Bailey trial, which heard how Beech was Mr Tomlin’s neighbour and regularly hosted Swan at the block.

Investigators said Mr Tomlin believed the pair were dealing drugs from there and often challenged their presence on the estate.

On 17 October, he returned home shortly after 5.20pm to find Beech and Swan meeting on the first floor landing of the building where he lived.

A witness told the court that Mr Tomlin armed himself with a baseball bat and chain before confronting them.

CCTV footage captured him fighting Swan, with Beech intervening before Mr Tomlin was overcome.

The killers hit him multiple times in the head with his baseball bat and stabbed him repeatedly in the neck, before fleeing and leaving him for dead.

Police arrived on scene shortly after the assault and found Mr Tomlin lying on the floor near a lift with severe injuries.

Prosecutors said the baseball bat split during the “extraordinarily vicious attack”.

Ian Tomlin was murdered after accusing his neighbour of drug dealing (Metropolitan Police)

He had received fatal wounds to the back of his head and neck, and was pronounced dead at the scene.

A post-mortem identified the cause of Mr Tomlin’s death as a blunt force trauma to the head and stab wounds to the neck.

Mr Tomlin was a former boxer and the son of a man who moved to Britain from the Caribbean as part of the Windrush generation.

Tributes were left by the local community near the scene of his murder, with a sign reading: “Stop poisoning our neighbourhood. Our children live here.”

Beech, of Cromwell House in Battersea, and Swan, of Enterprise Way in Wandsworth, had denied murder.

Mr Tomlin was among 134 people killed in London in 2018 – the highest total in a decade and a 15 per cent rise year-on-year.