Four teenagers and a man have all been found guilty of the double murder of Max Dixon and Mason Rist in Bristol earlier this year.
A jury has decided that Antony Snook, Riley Tolliver and three boys now aged 15, 16 and 17, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were all guilty of the murders of both boys in a violent attack on a street in Knowle West on the last Saturday of January.
The court had heard all five had worked ‘like a five-a-side team’, with Snook the driver and the four teenagers ‘hunting as a pack’ in misguided revenge for an attack on a house in Hartcliffe just an hour or so earlier.
But the two teenage victims of their revenge attack, Max Dixon, 16 and his best friend Mason Rist, 15, had nothing whatsoever to do with the events in Hartcliffe – they had been in their own homes all evening playing on a computer game and only went out to go to the local takeaway.
Just seconds after Max called for Mason and the pair left his home on Ilminster Avenue in Knowle West, a car driven by 45-year-old Antony Snook, a one-legged landscape gardener from Hartcliffe, passed them. Snook turned round and stopped, and four teenagers inside, who were ‘armed to the teeth’, jumped out.
They launched into a brutal and shocking attack that lasted just seconds. Tolliver began immediately swinging at the two boys with a baseball bat, while the other three teenagers each brandished large ‘zombie’ knives and a sword. They chased the pair back up the road and quickly stabbed them. The youngest defendant, then aged just 14, stabbed Mason on the pavement opposite the front of his house. Tolliver, then 17 but now aged 18, attacked him on the ground with a baseball bat, and as he tried to get up he was stabbed again by a third attacker – a 17-year-old boy who cannot be named.
That 17-year-old had seconds earlier inflicted a fatal stab wound to Max as he and a 16-year-old chased the young footballer further up the road.
The four teens got back into the car, which Snook had quickly driven forward to catch up with them, and sped away – the entire length of time the young attackers were out of the car was just 33 seconds.
The prosecution in the case said that all five acted together in what is legally known as a ‘joint enterprise’, and all went to Knowle West with a common intention to kill or cause serious harm.
The prosecution told the court the five all ‘encouraged and supported’ each other in the attack – “they were each other’s armed back up”, prosecutor Ray Tully said. He told the jury which of the four teenagers reached and inflicted fatal injuries to Max and Mason was a mere ‘matter of chance’ in the chaos of the sudden assault – when they got out of the car ‘armed to the teeth’, they all intended for at least one of them to kill or cause serious injury to the two boys.
That meant those not physically responsible for the fatal injuries the two boys suffered were also found guilty. The 16-year-old defendant, who brandished a long knife and chased Max up the road but didn’t stab him, was also guilty of both murders, as was Tolliver, who hit a stricken and stabbed Mason with a baseball bat. The four ‘acted as each other’s armed back up’, the jury was told, and each ‘encouraged and assisted’ the other in the attack, whether they landed the fatal blows or not.
The jury also found that Snook, who drove the car but never got out of it and acted as a getaway driver, was also all guilty of both murders, as ‘without his actions, the attack would never have taken place’, the jury was told.
Sentencing of the five will take place at a later date.