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23rd June 2017
Posted by BBC Essex News
Flash Day jailed for hiring hitman to kill stepfather
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Essex Police
Flash Day was angry after learning he would not be the sole inheritor of his stepfather John Sales' home
A man has been jailed for life for hiring a hitman to kill his stepfather.
Flash Day, 46, of Colchester, was angry about not being the sole inheritor of John Sales' house.
Chelmsford Crown Court heard he hired Ryan Hynes, 22, who stabbed Mr Sales 11 times with a "Rambo-style knife" – wounding him in the face, head, neck, chest, shoulder and back.
Hynes was jailed for 17 years and three months for the attack, which Mr Sales survived.
The hitman had admitted attempted murder and conspiracy to murder.
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Essex Police
Ryan Hynes was jailed for 17 years and three months for the attack, which Mr Sales survived
John Sales was stabbed in the back in the back garden of the house he had just sold
Day, who denied conspiracy to commit murder, was told he would serve at least 25 years in prison.
A previous hearing was told Hynes, of Long Road, Lawford, went into the garden of the 70-year-old victim's house in Hythe Hill, Colchester, on 10 November 2015 and carried out the attack.
Police described the knifing, which involved "10in (25cm) Rambo-style hunting knife", as "ferocious".
The pensioner managed to dial 999 and officers arrived to find him critically injured on his doorstep.
Prosecutors said a "10in-long Rambo-style hunting knife" was used in the attack and its sheath was found at the scene
He was taken to hospital and put in an induced coma. He needed five operations and requires continuing medical treatment.
In May last year, a 17-year-old girl from Colchester, who had given Hynes an alibi, admitted perverting the course of justice.
She was sentenced to a 12-month rehabilitation order and a three-month curfew and supervision order.