'Evil' killer Shawn Tyson took friends of Brits murdered in Florida on 'journey to hell'

 
Rashid Razaq29 March 2012
WEST END FINAL

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Friends of two British men shot dead in Florida looked “evil” in the eye to speak to their killer in court before he was jailed for life.

James Kouzaris, 24, and James Cooper, 25, were killed by Shawn Tyson when they drunkenly walked into a rundown housing estate in Sarasota in April last year.

Tyson, who has a tattoo of the word “savage” on his chest, will spend his life in prison without parole after being convicted of first degree murder. The killer, who has just turned 17, avoided the death penalty because of his age.

Joe Hallett, a friend of the Britons, told Tyson: “I look you in the eyes and speak to you today as I have to try to make you understand the pain you have brought to the lives of so many people who cared, respected and loved James Kouzaris and James Cooper. You have taken us on a journey to hell.”

Another friend, Paul Davies, said: “You might think that being a man is about carrying a gun around but it isn’t. Wearing a mask and shooting two guys in cold blood is being a coward. I’ve had to sit in this courtroom and watch

my two best friends lying on the ground, riddled with bullet holes. I’ve had to listen to how you made them beg for their lives and then unloaded a gun on them knowing they would never in a million years have tried to hurt you.”

The families of Mr Cooper, a tennis coach from Hampton Lucy, near Warwick, and Mr Kouzaris, a town planner from Northampton, were not present at Sarasota County courthouse.

In a statement, they expressed anger that Tyson had been released from detention a day before the killings in an administrative error. They said: “We were given a life sentence when our sons were so brutally and needlessly taken from us. The searing pain will continue until our sentence is at an end. The evil of the killer is one thing, but the fact is, he [should] not have been on the streets.”

Tyson, who had tried to rob the men but then shot them after they said they had no money, showed no emotion throughout the trial. Asked if he wanted to say anything before being sentenced, he mumbled: “No.”

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