Law Degree Dropout Jailed for Life for Smashing a Stranger's Head with a Brick

A law degree drop-out who battered a charity worker to death with a brick while taking a designer drug has been jailed for life. Malachi Lindo, 27, repeatedly bludgeoned 51 year-old Phillip Steels in the street in Enfield, North London, after taking the ecstasy clone Ethylone.

The attack was so savage that when Mr Steels was discovered his face had been damaged beyond recognition and there was a gaping hole in the side of his head.

Tesco worker Lindo had admitted the manslaughter of the father-of-four but it was argued on his behalf that he was not guilty of murder because he was suffering an abnormality of his mental functioning at the time.

But following a trial at the Old Bailey, a jury last week found Lindo, from Enfield, guilty of murder by a majority of 10 to one.

Judge Paul Worsley QC sentenced him to life with a minimum of 14 years behind bars.

He said: 'It was a brutal attack. In the early hours of September 4 last year, having taken a cocktail of cannabis and ethylone, you attacked a complete stranger in the street and literally smashed his head in. It was an unprovoked and tragic killing.

'It is argued and agreed by psychiatrists that you were suffering at the time a drug-induced psychosis.'

The judge described Lindo as an intelligent man who became the first of his family to go to university, studying law at Queen Mary College in London.

This time last year, he was shadowing an Old Bailey judge, he said.

But Lindo, who suffered from depression, dropped out of college and set himself up as a drug dealer instead.

The court heard that on the evening before the attack, Mr Steels, of Burncroft Avenue, Enfield, had been drinking at home and had later gone out.

 

Mr Steels

He had been involved in a long dispute with a neighbour and was said to be angry when he left a friend's house and came across Lindo in Green Street.

The pair got into a row and after being knocked to the ground, Lindo hit him repeatedly with a brick from a pile nearby.

Mr Steels, originally from Co Sligo in Ireland, was discovered by police lying on a footpath with the brick lying next to his head.

He had a large hole in the left side of his head and his face was damaged beyond recognition, the jury was told.

Lindo was seen rolling around in the middle of the road 50 metres away with the victim's blood on his hands, prosecutor Anthony Orchard QC said.

When he was detained by police, he became erratic and shouted: 'Take me to heaven, kill me now, I want to die.' (dailymail)