![\"Francis](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0_Francis-Lowe-edit.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFrancis Lowe’s life was said to have been ‘destroyed’ after he was accused of murdering 19-year-old Sean McHugh<\/p>\n
Francis Lowe, of Breckside Park, aged 25(Image: Merseyside Police)<\/p>\n
A dad who was cleared of murder as a teenage boy threw away his second chance at life and ended up back behind bars. Francis Lowe was aged only 14 when he was accused of murdering 19-year-old Sean McHugh<\/a>, who was stabbed to death during a gang attack in a launderette.<\/p>\n Having previously been described as a “model schoolboy”, his remand into custody ahead of his acquittal at trial was said to have led to him being “destroyed” and coming out “not the same person”. After reportedly turning to drugs as a result, he then became involved in the wholesale trafficking of cocaine and cannabis via EncroChat using the handles “Tired Swarmer” and “Big Carp”.<\/p>\n Liverpool Crown Court<\/a> heard this afternoon, Friday, that data uncovered when French law enforcement authorities infiltrated the encrypted communications platform during the spring of 2020 linked Lowe to these usernames after he referred to himself as “Young Fran” during messages and shared his postcode with some of his 36 criminal contacts. The 25-year-old, of Breckside Park in Anfield<\/a>, also discussed his grandad having died in April of that year and a police incident at the Malmaison Hotel the following month which was linked to the defendant.<\/p>\n Daniel Bramhall, prosecuting, detailed how Lowe’s communications meanwhile evidence him “playing a leading role in conspiracies to supply multiple kilograms of class A drugs and cannabis”, having both acted as a broker during sales between other parties and “had ownership of the product” himself. This included directing the user of the handle “Sand Egg” to collect 2kg of cocaine from Birmingham in April 2020.<\/p>\n Lowe was also said to have “operated a highly commercial trade in cannabis”, having completed deals with a contact using the pseudonym “Alex Iwobi”<\/a>, seemingly inspired by the former Everton footballer, and ran his own “graft line”. He was meanwhile labelled the “driving force behind the handling of a stolen vehicle”, a 17-plate Mercedes AMG then worth between \u00a332,000 and \u00a338,000, in June 2020, the car having been purchased for a \u00a32,000 sum for onward sale.<\/p>\n While he was not charged with any weapons offences, Lowe was shown to be engaged in a “number of communications discussing the potential sourcing and supply of firearms”. This involved him being contacted by a user known as “Goldfish.com”, who was “requesting firearms for sale” after he “gained trust as a potential supplier of firearms”.<\/p>\n Lowe was meanwhile labelled the “point of contact in the UK for the firearms trader Lesser Honey” as a result of messages including pictures of a Czech-made gun and making reference to Glock self-loading pistols. Police belatedly attended his home in order to execute a search warrant on March 4 this year, finding \u00a39,000 of cash, some of which was suspected to be counterfeit currency, hidden inside the boiler.<\/p>\n A quantity of cannabis, together with “tick lists” and snap bags”, was also recovered at this time. In reference to his use of EncroChat, Lowe replied to his arrest: “That was about seven years ago.”<\/p>\n Overall, his messages were evidenced to show plots to supply 6kg of cocaine and 22.5kg of cannabis. He had no previous convictions at the time of his involvement, although he went on to add matters of supplying class A and B drugs to his criminal record during 2022.<\/p>\n Julian Nutter, defending, told the court: “The defendant’s family are here in court to support him, not least his mother and girlfriend. You have seen references from Megan Carney, his girlfriend, and Frederick Tootle. It is perhaps a powerful point that these are old offences. He has since turned his life around, as you can see in the strong letter from Megan.<\/p>\n “There is another aspect of mitigation available to him. It is, in my respectful submission, quite unusual and exceptional. When he was 14, he was a model schoolboy. He was down to take his GCSE examinations. He was being brought up by his mother, had no absences from school, was not part of any criminal group and had prospects, because he was an intelligent young man who wanted to do well in society, as we hope most young people do.<\/p>\n “Then, out of the blue, he was arrested for a murder that he did not commit. He was held at Barton Moss for a period of eight months with disturbed youngsters, and he came out of that experience, having been acquitted by a jury of murder at this court, the only individual in the trial who was acquitted.<\/p>\n “It was the launderette murder, which was quite an important murder at the time. When he came out, he was destroyed. He was not the same person. He had lost the track for his GCSE examinations. He started to prepare himself to qualify as an electrician. There was still some hope, but he did not manage to take that and started to drift into the kind of crowd he had been in the dock with in that murder trial.<\/p>\n “I was in that trial and was junior counsel for him. It was clear to anybody who saw the video evidence that the person who was supposed to be him was about 5ft. He was between, I think, at the time, about 5ft9 and 6ft.<\/p>\n “When he was acquitted, there was a figure that could be seen in that footage, an ape-like figure. Mr Nicholas Johnson of King’s Counsel said it was the prosecution case that it was this defendant. When he emerged, acquitted, the mother of the deceased congratulated my lay client’s mother and confirmed that it was somebody called Chimp that did it.<\/p>\n “That trial experience turned this young man away from the straight and narrow. Barton Moss is a wonderful place. They do their best there. It is the people they are doing their best with that can be the problem. To be stuck with such company must have had a terrible effect on him.<\/p>\n “He came out and turned to drugs as a prop. It started out as cannabis. That progressed to cocaine. Then, he has been drawn in. None of this excuses his behaviour here. What it does do is give an explanation for it. This is a consequence of this young man being, by the jury’s verdict, wrongly accused. He has been destroyed by that. That is why he is so low and how he finds himself here.<\/p>\n “From those letters, you can see that he is maturing into somebody a lot better. His development must have been arrested by his experiences. I ask you to give as much credit as you can to those aspects in passing sentence upon him today. This is someone who has had punishment for something he has not done in the past.”<\/p>\n Lowe admitted conspiracy to supply cocaine and cannabis, handling stolen goods and possession of criminal property. Appearing via video link to HMP Altcourse, he was jailed for nine years.<\/p>\n Sentencing, Recorder David Knifton KC said: “You were involved in a leading capacity using an EncroChat device with the handles Big Carp and Tired Swarmer in a conspiracy to supply class A and B drugs in multi kilogram quantities. Those communications demonstrate that you were able to source large quantities of drugs from around the country and sell them to others, in some instances using your own graft phone line with a quick turnaround.<\/p>\n “I bear in mind that you were only 21, just short of your 22nd birthday, at the time of the conspiracy. Mr Nutter, on your behalf, explains that your involvement in crime comes from a very sad story. Having been an intelligent and well achieving young man at school, you found yourself charged with murder, a murder of which you were acquitted at trial.<\/p>\n “While in custody on remand awaiting trial, you were no doubt exposed to a number of sophisticated criminals. Having eventually been acquitted, you were introduced, no doubt, by others within that fraternity to the world of drugs.<\/p>\n “Your girlfriend or partner, who you met in 2022, was shocked to discover your previous role. She describes you, now, as a mature and responsible father and role model to your three-year-old son. A letter from a long standing friend describes the support that you have supplied to him and his family.<\/p>\n “You remained, to some extent, involved in the supply of drugs. You were directing, organising and buying drugs on a commercial scale and clearly had substantial links to others in the chain with the expectation of very substantial financial advantage.”<\/p>\n The ECHO previously reported<\/a> the murder of Mr McHugh, who was known as “Shorty”, was linked to an Anfield-based gang known as the Lane Heads. The teenager was doing his laundry at a branch of Liver Launderette on Priory Road on September 30 2013 when he was brutally attacked.<\/p>\n While he was able to lock himself in a back room of the premises, his assailants were said to have kicked the door down, with the gang of five louts being supported by the arrival of further reinforcements brandishing weapons that they had earlier hidden on a nearby footpath. They then used a swordstick to stab their victim in the leg, severing an artery.<\/p>\n Mr McHugh was able to escape into an alleyway, where he would subsequently be discovered by police, gravely wounded. He was taken to hospital but died as a result of his injuries four days later.<\/p>\n The gang’s ringleader Reese O’Shaughnessy, then aged 19, cousins Andrew and Corey Hewitt, aged 15 and 14 respectively, 13-year-old Joseph McGill and 14-year-old Keyfer Dykstra were convicted of his murder the following year. The former, who collected the murder weapon and plunged it into Mr McHugh’s leg, was handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 18 years for his “truly wicked crime”.<\/p>\n “Second in command” Dyksrta, who led the chase prior to the stabbing, was told to serve at least 12 years behind bars. Andrew Hewitt, the first of the teens to attack their target, was locked up for a minimum of nine years.<\/p>\n McGill, who handed Dykstra a knife and poured detergent on the floor of the launderette in the aftermath, received life with at least eight years behind bars. Corey Hewitt was meanwhile handed a minimum of six years, having played no physical part in the assault but picked up the abandoned weapon as the gang fled.<\/p>\n The “enthusiastic, card carrying and fully paid up” members of the gang, so named due to their association with Townsend Lane, were said to have carried out their attack in revenge for another stabbing several months earlier, in which Dykstra was targeted by the rival Walton<\/a> Village Heads. They were said to have believed that Mr McHugh was linked to this other group, singling him out as a “Walton rat” when they spotted him on their “turf” before savagely killing him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Francis Lowe’s life was said to have been ‘destroyed’ after he was accused of murdering 19-year-old Sean McHugh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4744,141,61,5,6,415],"class_list":{"0":"post-16309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-anfield","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-walton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116421781256574311","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}