Lindsay Birbeck: Teenager who killed teaching assistant jailed

Accrington boy sentenced to minimum 16 years

A 17-year-old boy has been sentenced to life for the murder of teaching assistant Lindsay Birbeck.

Rocky Marciano Price killed Birbeck in an "entirely random" attack before burying her days later in a nearby cemetery last August.

Price was caught on CCTV carting a wheelie bin with Birbeck's body inside 12 days before she was found in a shallow grave in Accrington Cemetery in Lancashire.

Sentencing Price at Preston Crown Court to a minimum term of 16 years, Mrs Justice Yip said: “There is no evidence of any sexual assault or other apparent motive. Why the defendant chose to kill Lindsay, only he knows."

Moments before killing Birbeck as she strolled alone in the woods, Price had been stalking another woman who was aware she was being followed.

“The evidence of the other woman demonstrates, beyond doubt, that Lindsay was not targeted for any reason, other than she was a lone woman. If it had not been her, it could have been someone else.

“This was the entirely random killing of a stranger.”

Price, who was 16 at the time of the murder, came forward when police released an appeal asking for the public's help to identify the young man seen pulling the wheelie bin in CCTV footage.

He claimed he was not involved in her death and that a mystery man had approached him in the area and offered a cash reward to dispose of a body.

Rocky Marciano Price was sentenced to a minimum 16 years (PA)

A jury rejected Price's account and unanimously found him guilty, exactly one year after Birbeck disappeared.

The judge heard that Price had autism and learning difficulties but said this did not excuse or explain his behaviour.

Sarah Birbeck, daughter of Lindsay, told the court in her victim statement that her mother was a higher-level teaching assistant and “the irony is she would have taught boys like the defendant and would have tried her best to help him”.

She added: “The fact that he has made us come to court and listen to every graphic detail of my mum's murder when he could have saved us this pain by pleading guilty is unforgivable.”

Outside court, Price's father, Creddy, argued there was no DNA evidence to link his son to the actual killing.

He said: “Our son is innocent, he has not got the mental capacity to hurt anyone. We are not going to stop fighting, if it takes us all our lives, to find this other man.”

Additional reporting by Press Association