A HEARTBROKEN mother and father broke down in tears in court as they made an emotional victim impact statement minutes before four men were given life sentences for murdering their son.

Addressing Lamech Gordon-Carew, who will turn 21 tomorrow, and Alize Spence, 19, in the dock, Billy Henham’s father Ian turned to them and said: “We should be a family of four and now we are just three. You took that away from us for ever.”

Ian, a former architect, and his wife Debbie, of Henfield, took turns to deliver the statement to a packed Court One in Hove. Their youngest son, Rory, a former postgraduate journalism student at the University of Sussex, sat next to them.

Mr Henham told the court: “How do we start to sum up what has happened to our family in just a few words on a piece of paper. Impossible.

“We are bereft, the feelings of loss are visceral. We have lost someone so special to us that at times we can’t function.

“For the past two and a half years we have existed, not lived. Our emotions have ranged from horror and shock to absolute pain and then total anger.

“For many months we blamed ourselves that what happened to our son was a direct result of our failings in some way …”

Breaking down, Mr Henham continued: “ ... that we hadn’t prepared him properly and that we should have made him more aware of the dangers in life.”

With Debbie beside him in tears, Mr Henham told the court: “For every right-thinking parent, the most important thing in one’s life is to nurture your children ... to care for them, feed them, teach them, shelter them and of course … love them. This we did unconditionally for Bill, and with every fibre of our being from his very first breath.

“Sadly though, we weren’t there for his last … others were, but as we’ve heard they did nothing to help him in his final, tortured, moments. Screaming out and likely wondering if anyone would help him.”

The court had heard how student Billy was murdered at a New Year’s Eve party in 2020 and suffered 67 separate injuries.

He was beaten, stripped naked and thrown off a balcony at a disused building in North Street, Brighton, on January 1, 2020.

Mr Henham added: “For us to see the final CCTV pictures of him, across the road from the squat party, totally unaware of the fate that would befall him is heart-breaking.

“We’ve shouted at the screens … Don’t go in there Bill. But we can’t speak to him and he can’t hear us. Instead, we’ve seen a white silhouette of a crouched up figure lying, lifeless and naked on a derelict rooftop.”

Gregory Hawley and Dushane Meikle were each sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 25 years, while Lamech Gordon-Carew, 20, and Alize Spence, who was just 16 at the time of the murder, were each sentenced to minimum terms of 18 years in prison.