Teen killer who kicked Garry Newlove to death freed from prison
The teenage killer who kicked a dad-of-three to death outside his house has been freed from prison after 17 years. Adam Swellings was one of three teens who attacked 47-year-old Garry Newlove after he caught them vandalising his wife's car outside their home in Warrington on the evening of August 10 2007. The dad-of-three was taken to hospital, where he died of his injuries on August 12.
Swellings, who was 19 at the time, had been freed on bail just hours earlier after an assault, and had ignored a court order banning him from Warrington where the crime took place. He was convicted of murder in January 2008, along with 17-year-old Stephen Sorton and 16-year-old Jordan Cunliffe, and was given a life sentence with a minimum of 17 years.
The ECHO previously reported Swellings was due to face the Parole Board last year as his minimum sentence expired in August. The MailOnline reports that Swellings was informed in December that the Parole Board panel had recommended he be freed from prison. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said he has now been released on licence.
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A spokesperson for the MoJ said: "This was a horrific crime and our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Garry Newlove. Adam Swellings will be on licence for the rest of his life, with strict conditions and intensive probation supervision after he is released, and he faces an immediate return to prison if he breaks the rules."
Swellings’ fellow killers Cunliffe and Sorton, then 16 and 17, received minimum jail terms of 12 and 15 years respectively for Garry's murder. Sorton’s sentence was cut by two years on appeal and both he and Cunliffe were released in 2020.
Garry's wife, Helen Newlove, created the charity Newlove Warrington and was given a peerage in 2010. She has since gone onto to become Victims' Commissioner where she liaises with ministers to offer advice on aspects of the criminal justice system.
During a speech in the House of Lords in 2015, Baroness Newlove explained the impact her husband's death had on their three children. She said: "A lack of access to appropriate psychological support meant my daughters never felt part of society, yet society had let them down.
“My oldest daughter was an A-star student, she had a place at university but felt unable to carry out her academic achievements that she had walked into university with her father to do. My youngest daughter really struggled at 12 to get up to go to school, living in a bubble that nobody really cared about her, never understood the mood swings that she came into.
“And my middle daughter, her GCSEs had gone forever because she couldn’t get round what had happened to her. Because nobody sat and spoke to her and asked what she felt.”