26 years for killing ex-girlfriend's new partner

A father who shot dead a plasterer at a house in Wolverhampton was today beginning a life sentence of at least 26 years for the murder.

Jahmayne Meade blasted Lee Douglas in the neck and back after finding him with his ex-girlfriend at a house in Bilston. He had gone to the house armed with a gun.

His ex-girlfriend, Leanna Blake, had ignored text messages and calls from him.

Sentencing Meade at Birmingham Crown Court yesterday, Mr Justice Butterfield told the father of one: "In fixing that period I am in no way attempting to put a value on the life of Lee Douglas. That life was priceless and you took it away."

Yesterday's hearing heard Meade, of Maidstone Road, Leicester, arrived at the home of one of Miss Blake's friends on the corner of Arthur Road and Wellington Road shortly after midnight on November 11. He discovered his ex girlfriend with new partner, 31-year-old Mr Douglas, from Tipton.

Mr Peter Greaves-Smith QC told the court there was a fight between the two men at the flat entrance, during which Meade produced a 9mm pistol with a silencer attached and shot Mr Douglas. Miss Blake was hiding in a cupboard at the time.

Meade fled the scene with three relatives in the Vauxhall Corsa they arrived in, before later getting a taxi to a friend's house in Nottingham. He was arrested at his home in Leicester days later.

Mr Justice Butterfield told the defendant: "You travelled from Leicester to Wolverhampton in order, you say, to try and persuade Miss Blake to become reconciled with you. I have to say that the evidence of how you were behaving in the minutes before you took the life of Lee Douglas leaves me in the gravest doubt that that was the real reason you came to Wolverhampton."

Meade's 21-year-old brother, Courtney, cousin Ricardo Morgan, and brother-in-law Irfan Patel, 24, were with Meade. They have admitted assisting an offender and will be sentenced at a later date.

Read more in Friday's Express & Star.