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Life for murder teacher

20/12/2002

A TEACHER has been jailed for life for murdering one man and attempting to kill another.

Dukinfield man Thomas Clark was given a 15-year jailing at Manchester Crown Court for the murder of Dennis Cottrill, 71, in April.

Clark, 29, of Victoria Road, stabbed Mr Cottrill to death in Ashton less than a fortnight after the attempted murder of an 18-year-old man. The teenager was stabbed in both arm arms and now suffers from long term disability.

Clark, a physics teacher at Egerton Park in Denton, handed himself into police shortly after killing Mr Cottrill in Henrietta Street.

"I won't be any trouble ... I just need to stop doing this," Clark told detectives.

Leading officer, Detective Superintendent Jack Dees said: "Clark is a highly dangerous individual who attacked two men indiscriminately in the street.

"His defence suggested he was fighting personality problems which were urging him to carry out unprovoked attacks on strangers but this was not accepted by the court. We may never know the motive for these offences.

"Today's sentence will ensure Clark will no longer be a danger to the public and I would like to extend my sympathy to the family of Mr Cottrill and to the young man who was also attacked."

Clark was given 15 years imprisonment for murder and a concurrent 15 years for attempted murder after admitting both offences.

He was told by the city's recorder, Judge Sir Rhys Davies: "You are an intelligent but a deeply disturbed and dangerous man who came to believe it was necessary for you both to kill and to injure human beings wholly unknown to you."