A teenager who shot a boy in the face as his victim walked to school has been jailed for 24 years.
Jacob Talbot-Lummis, 16, was fixated with guns and ultraviolent computer games. He ambushed the 15-year-old boy in Kesgrave, Suffolk, on the morning of the first day back at school after the first lockdown.
He used his grandfather’s shotgun to shoot his victim, who cannot be named, from less than five feet away on September 7 last year.
Talbot-Lummis can be named after Judge Martyn Levett lifted a reporting restriction yesterday, describing the victim’s injuries as “unimaginably serious”.
Ipswich crown court was told that the day before the shooting Talbot-Lummis had been playing Blood Trail, a virtual reality game which a friend said he “adored”. The game is described by distributors as the “most violent game in VR”.
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He drove his father’s car to the scene and lay in wait for more than an hour before firing the double-barrelled shotgun at the victim’s face. The boy was taken to Ipswich Hospital, where suffered a stroke shortly after arrival. He survived but continues to suffer flashbacks and be reliant on his family, the court heard.
Talbot-Lummis claimed in his evidence that he had only wished to scare the boy, whom he accused of causing him “humiliation and fear”, before accidentally pulling the trigger. Jurors rejected his account and convicted him of attempted murder, possession of a shotgun with intent to endanger life and possession of a shotgun with intent to cause fear of injury to the boy.
Judge Levett dismissed the notion that there had been bullying “of the scale and degree suggested”. He said: “The intention to kill wasn’t formed on the spur of the moment. This was all preplanned and premeditated.”
He said that Talbot-Lummis had played video games obsessively since he was nine, “playing games in a virtual world more suitable for 18-year-olds”, which partly spurred a bloodthirsty “fantasy” to kill. He expressed concern about “the frequent glorification of shooting a character on screen”.
Talbot-Lummis kept a haul of BB guns in his bedroom. “If you wanted to scare [the victim] you could have used one of your own authentic-looking guns,” the judge said.
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The victim’s father broke down in court as he read out a statement about the impact of the ordeal.
He said: “My life was truly stopped when the defendant shot my youngest son. I will never have what I consider to be a normal life again. My family have lived this crime every time we leave our home or talk to my son.
“He will never have the life he was destined for, never achieve the happiness he deserves and will have to cope with the physical and mental limitations, scarring and frustrations for the whole of his life, which is truly heartbreaking as a parent.”
He said that his son underwent numerous operations. “I was considering scenarios where death might be a better outcome — which is a totally unthinkable and heartbreaking. How do you tell your son he had been shot in his own street by someone he knows?”
Diana Ellis QC, in mitigation, said that Talbot-Lummis had expressed his regret and remorse.
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Judge Levett imposed an extended sentence, reserved for especially dangerous offenders, comprising 24 years in custody and five years on licence. He added that Talbot-Lummis “didn’t show any mercy or restraint” and voiced concern about “the frequent glorification of shooting a character on screen”.
“That sentence will affect you until you’re 45 years old,” he told the teenager.