British 14-year-old sentenced for girl's murder

[Reuters]

LIVERPOOL, England, Feb 7 (Reuter) - A 14-year-old British
boy was on Friday ordered detained indefinitely for the murder
of a nine-year-old schoolgirl whom he battered to death on a
railway line in a killing that shocked the nation.
Brian Smith, who was 13 at the time of the murder, showed no
emotion as he was led from the dock by a social worker after
sentence was passed.
Judge John Kay told him: ``I think you are a very, very
dangerous boy...What you did that day was a dreadful, wicked
thing.''
Smith changed his plea to guilty on Friday after denying
murdering Jade Matthews when he first appeared in court last
November.
He beat her to death with a window frame last July at Bootle
in northwestern England because he was afraid she would tell her
stepfather after Smith had pushed her over and cut her head, the
prosecution said.
Detectives believe Matthews was hurt accidentally, and the
boy panicked and killed her simply because he feared retribution
from her protective stepfather.
Smith had insisted to police that he had given the girl a
lift on his bicycle but had left her safe and well in a park.
But he confessed to having killed her during a series of
interviews with a leading forensic adolescent psychiatrist.
The moments when Matthews was murdered was caught on a
security camera, though the quality was so bad that the pair
were little more than dots moving on a screen.
The case prompted comparisons with the murder three years
earlier of two-year-old Jamie Bulger by two young boys. The
toddler was caught on security cameras as he was being led away
to his death, also by a railway line.