Murder gang on probation

LONDON - Four members of a gang that raped, tortured and stabbed to death a 16-year-old girl before shooting her teenage friend in the head were on probation at the time of the attacks.

Charles Clarke, the British Home Secretary, said yesterday that it was "vital" that lessons were learned from the murder of Mary-Ann Leneghan.

But David Davis, the Conservative shadow Home Secretary, accused the Government of mishandling the probation service and highlighted a series of other recent killings by offenders being supervised in the community.

The row came after a jury convicted a sixth gang member of murdering Leneghan in a park in Reading in May last year. Four men had already been found guilty of stabbing the teenager to death and a fifth man had admitted the crime.

Four of the gang had been under the supervision of probation officers for previous crimes. One of them, a Kosovan, was also living in Britain illegally.

Leneghan's 18-year-old friend survived after the homemade bullet broke into fragments on impact and failed to penetrate her skull.

- INDEPENDENT