A British construction worker has admitted accidentally killing a friend in a drunken, drug-fueled game over “who could take a punch best.”
Jason Thomas, 40, had been drinking and taking cocaine with Liam Morgan-Whittle, 22, in Wales when the two “started to boast about who could take a punch the best,” the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.
Thomas then punched his pal “twice in quick succession,” knocking him unconscious.
“Sadly, despite the efforts of the emergency services, Liam Morgan-Whittle died,” the CPS said — with police saying he “died after suffering catastrophic head injuries from two punches.”
He sustained a bleed on the brain and went into cardiac arrest before dying in March 2023, according to a news release from Dyfed-Powys police.
Thomas pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced Monday to 2 1/2 years in prison.
The pair, who knew each other from working together previously on construction sites, got into the deadly game at the house of a friend, Michael Davies, in the town of Llanelli, South Wales, the BBC reported.
“There came a point in the evening where they began a discussion which could be described as banter but became an increasingly aggressive argument as to who could take a punch better,” prosecutor William Hughes had said in court.
“I’ll hit you first,” Davies told the younger man, to which the victim replied, “Go on then,” Davies told police.
But when Thomas fatally knocked out Morgan-Whittle, Davies asked: “What have you done? There was no need for it.”
“He asked for it, I told him not to mess,” Thomas replied.
However, Thomas “never intended” to hurt the other man in the mutual “punch-for-punch game,” said his defense attorney, John Hipkin.
“Jason Thomas has struggled to cope with what he has done. His remorse is genuine,” he went on.
Judge Paul Thomas told Jason Thomas that the “tragic event was fueled by your excessive alcohol and cocaine use which caused you to lose all common sense.”
“You were warned by someone present not to do that. He could see the risk. But you in your substance-befuddled state, could not. Both the punches you delivered were with great force, sufficient to knock him unconscious, and then to go into cardiac arrest from which he never recovered,” the judge said.
The victim’s mother, Claire Whittle, said in a victim impact statement she will “never” come to terms with the loss of her “loving, caring and funny” son.
“No matter what I say, words cannot explain the pain, devastation, anguish, and anger we have endured since Liam was taken. Nobody should go through tragedy like we all have because it is unending,” she said.
“We will never come to terms with it, and we will never heal.”
