Teenager gets life for young dad's murder

LONDON (Reuters) - A teenager was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum 25 years on Friday for shooting dead a young father who had tried to protect his fiancee and three-year-old son from bullying.

Bradley Tucker, 18, of Canning Town, east London, was sentenced at the Old Bailey after being found guilty of murder at an earlier trial.

His victim, Peter Woodhams, 22, was shot in front of his family on the doorstep of his home in east London last August after confronting youths he thought were bullying him and his family.

Tucker, a painter and decorator, had admitted manslaughter and a related firearms charge but denied murder, saying he had not realised the gun was real.

The shooting came at the end of a campaign of violence and bullying by "hoodies" on the estate in the Custom House area of London.

Woodhams, a TV engineer, had suffered a knife attack in the months before his shooting, but no one was ever apprehended for that crime.

He lost his life after confronting Tucker, believing him to have been responsible for the knife attack.