THE sister of a schoolboy who was battered to death has spoken of her pain after his killer's sentence was reduced.
Jessica Conman, 23, said the decision to reduce Leon Clarkson's sentence has devastated her family.
Her younger brother Lee – affectionately known as Rolly to his family – was 15 when he was chased and beaten to death by a gang looking for revenge.
Clarkson, who was 16 at the time of the killing, was convicted of his murder along with Lee Young and sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 11 years.
That was reduced by nine months this week after a High Court judge heard he had made "excellent progress" in prison. He could now be released in four years' time, when he is 27.
Miss Conman said: "He has his whole life ahead of him, he is coming home in a few years. Rolly's never coming home.
"It makes me sick. The sentence was a joke in the first place – 11 years for murder, what kind of sentence is that?
"We have to pick up the pieces for the rest of our lives and he will be out to start his life again in four years. It's disgusting."
Lee was chased by the gang of 20 youths, before he was hit over the head with a tree branch, punched and kicked to death outside a shop in Ings Road, east Hull.
Although Young struck the fatal blows with the branch, Clarkson repeatedly stamped on and kicked Lee as he lay dying on the floor.
Police said he suffered some of the worst head injuries they had ever seen.
Miss Conman said reading that Clarkson was described as a good role model who plans to start an accountancy career when he is released from jail was particularly painful.
"It's like rubbing salt in the wound," she said.
"That is more or less saying he is going to have a good life when he gets out. Rolly never got that chance.
"To see a judge saying he is a good person makes me sick. How can he be a good person when there was a boy lying defenceless and dying on the floor and he stamped on him, kicked him and punched him?
"He is getting out to an accountancy career and Rolly is six feet under. That's not justice."
The court was told Clarkson has suffered "nightmare flashbacks" about the night of the killing during his time in jail.
Lee was targeted at random by the gang from Bransholme, who were looking for a fight with someone from the Ings Road Estate in retaliation for an attack on Clarkson three months earlier.
Miss Conman said: "Do they not think I have flashbacks?
"I went there, I saw him in the back of an ambulance and the state he was in.
"I saw Rolly dead, on a mortuary slab and in a coffin.
"How dare he try to get sympathy by saying he has flashbacks?"
Clarkson also sent a letter to Miss Conman expressing his remorse several years ago – which she has thrown away.
She said: "They were just words on paper. I think they only write these things because they know it will look better on them. It is just paper, it doesn't mean he is sorry."
She said the impact of Lee's brutal killing in 2006 has left her suffering with mental health issues.
Two years ago, she went to the family home of Lee Young and threatened to kill them.
She was only spared jail after his mother wrote to the court asking for her not to be sent to prison.
"I regret what I did, but it was because the sentence was not fair," she said. "We all still live in the same area, his family are on the next estate and I am constantly being reminded of them. I was grateful for the letter she wrote and it made me realise it wasn't her fault.
"What happened has been constant mental torture. I will never move on with my life, it will always be missing something.
"Other people move on but to us it is still raw. It will always be on our minds."
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