In a televised sentencing today a Crown Court judge has handed down a 32-month jail term to a man found to have played a role in the riots in Southport last week.
John O’Malley, 43, was among a group of up to 1,000 people involved in the disorder outside a mosque in the Merseyside town last Tuesday.
At least 50 police officers were injured as protesters hurled bricks, lit fires, and threw bottles a day after Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, were killed in the town.
O’Malley, from Southport, pleaded guilty to a charge of violent disorder earlier this week and was jailed for 32 months at Liverpool Crown Court in the first on-camera sentencing hearing over the riots.
He was sentenced alongside 69-year-old semi-retired welder William Nelson Morgan, who admitted violent disorder and possession of an offensive weapon – a wooden cosh – in Liverpool on Saturday night.
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