Teenagers guilty of abusing dying boy

The trial was heard at Swansea Crown Court

A boy of 17 has been found guilty of stealing from a Swansea teenager who was dying after sniffing fumes from a stolen aerosol can.

Another teenager aged 14 has also been found guilty of assaulting Ross Hooper, who was 13.

Ross Hooper died after sniffing aerosol fumes

Ross was found unconscious near a chapel in the Cwmbwrla area of the city in January, and later died in hospital.

Judge Vivian Manning Davies told Swansea Youth Court on Thursday what the 17-year-old had done was 'shameful' and he could not think of a worse example of theft.

The defendant had been charged with stealing jewellery from the estate of Ross Hooper on the basis that he may have already died when the theft took place.

Both he and the other teenager found guilty of assaulting Ross will be sentenced on 18 October.

Hallucinated

In earlier evidence, the court heard how Ross had been beaten up by a group of teenagers as they sniffed aerosol fumes outside Gorse Mission Presbyterian Church.

Three other teenagers were initially charged in relation to the death but were later freed.

The 14-year-old denied both the assault charge and an alternative charge of using threatening and abusive behaviour.

He told the court the schoolboy became "mad" and attacked him as the gang hallucinated on cans of solvent stolen from a supermarket.

He claimed his friend sniffed the contents of up to three cans of solvent in the hour before he collapsed outside the Swansea church.

The boy said he had hit out only in self-defence after his friend had refused to stop slapping him on the head.

Two teenage girls, 13, and a schoolboy, 14, who were also charged in relation to the death, were freed by the court after it was accepted their alleged attacks on the schoolboy may have taken place after his death.