Yahoo Finance Football fans clap for Arthur Labinjo-Hughes in touching tribute to murdered six-year-old
Football fans have clapped for Arthur Labinjo-Hughes in a touching tribute to the murdered six-year-old.
Applause filled the stadium at the West Ham vs Chelsea Match on Saturday afternoon during the sixth minute tribute.
A picture of the Birmingham City fan was projected onto a big screen as he was honoured in a minute-long tribute, with clubs around the country clapping for the youngster.
Coventry City, who played West Bromwich Albion also held a tribute, as did football fans at the Wolverhampton vs Liverpool game.
Fans at Birmingham City - who Arthur supported - tweeted on Saturday that players and fans staged a “touching tribute” by also clapping during their game away at Millwall. There are plans for another tribute for the team’s game at Cardiff.
The Attorney General is expected to be asked to review the “lenient” jail sentences given to the couple.
Solihull MP Julian Knight said he plans to lobby for longer jail terms for the “horrible monsters”.
Arthur died of a head injury inflicted by Tustin on June 16.
A court heard how Tustin, 32, repeatedly banged Arthur’s head on a hard surface in the hours leading up to his death.
She and 29-year-old Hughes has previously carried out a campaign of abuse, including starvation and then force-feeding Arthur food laced with salt.
During the sentencing, the judge said Arthur had been, at the time Tustin was introduced into his life, a “healthy, happy young boy”.
But less than three months after moving in with Tustin at the start of the first national lockdown, the little boy was left “broken” from exposure to a campaign of “acute or prolonged abuse,” he said.
Tustin was also convicted of two counts of child cruelty, including salt-poisoning and withholding food and drink from Arthur.
She had admitted two other cruelty counts, wilfully assaulting Arthur on three occasions and isolating him, including by forcing him to stand in the hallway for up to 14 hours a day as part of a draconian punishment regime.
The judge said anyone could have seen the boy’s responses were a “cry for help from a deeply unhappy child”.
And he told Hughes, who had claimed in evidence he only realised after Arthur’s death how abusive his own behaviour was, that these were “self-serving lies”.
He said Tustin made a “calculated” decision to kill, adding: “I am sure that at the moment you launched this attack on him you intended that he should die.”
“You are a manipulative woman who will tell any lie, and shift the blame onto anyone, to save your own skin,” he added.
“You wanted Thomas Hughes so he could provide for you and your own children but did not want to be troubled by Arthur any longer.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday said ministers will leave “absolutely no stone unturned” to establish what went wrong in the “appalling” case.
Speaking during a by-election campaign visit in north Shropshire, Mr Johnson said: “It is early days, but I can tell you this, we will leave absolutely no stone unturned to find out exactly what went wrong in that appalling case.”
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said he would be making a statement on the case to Parliament on Monday.
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