A man has been jailed in Britain for at least 26 years for a murder he tried to blame on his 14-year-old son.
Tree surgeon Matthew Moseley (50) was sentenced at Preston Crown Court for shooting another man dead.
He was found guilty last Friday of the murder of 32-year-old Lee Holt following a three week trial.
He handed the firearm to his son Thomas, and told him to tell police that he was the one who pulled the trigger.
The teenager followed his father's orders and made a fake confession to police and his father stayed quiet as the boy was led away by police.
Police say Mr Holt went to Moseley's house on October 25th with a woman and two boys, in relation to an on-going dispute between one of the boys and Moseley's son, Thomas, who lived at the house.
Following an altercation near to the front door, Moseley - a licensed shotgun holder - grabbed a gun from a nearby cabinet and fatally shot Mr Holt in the chest, who was standing at the front of the house.
The gun used in the killing | Image: Lancashire Constabulary
He subsequently tried to encourage his teenage son to take the blame for the shooting, and gave evidence during the trial that Thomas pulled the trigger.
Detective Chief Inspector Jill Johnston from Lancashire's Force Major Investigation Team (FMIT) said: "Matthew Moseley has shown no remorse for his actions and instead allowed his own son, a 14-year-old boy, to go through the ordeal of being arrested and questioned by the police, for something which all along he knew he had done.
"If that wasn’t wicked enough, he then also pressurised the boy to take responsibility for a crime that he hadn’t committed and told the court during the trial that he was innocent and that the boy had fired the fatal shot.
"Moseley was a licensed firearm holder and should have known how dangerous these kinds of weapons are. Instead, in the heat of an altercation he used one of them to take a man’s life needlessly, all over a fall out between two schoolboys.
"The impact of what all of the people witnessed on that night cannot be underestimated with each and every one of their lives having been hugely affected."
