A DRUG addict from Northwich has been jailed for life for battering and stabbing a teenager to death in a pre-meditated attack.

Killer Ian Broughton, 28, attacked 17-year-old Rhys Butler in a drug den flat in Castle on May 27 last year, repeatedly smashing him over the head with a hammer and leaving him brain damaged and bleeding to death on the floor.

The former Witton Church Walk and Rudheath High pupil, of Priory Street, then stabbed the teenager twice in the back “to silence him”. He made “a token effort” to remove traces of his crime before fleeing on a mountain bike with £380 cash and “11 or 12” £10 bags of heroin stolen from Rhys’ dead body.

Broughton pleaded guilty to murdering the Speke teenager at Chester Crown Court on January 9. And on Thursday he was sentenced to a minimum of 22 years behind bars by Mrs Justice Swift.

The court heard Broughton had planned to attack Rhys, who dealt heroin and crack in Northwich, for at least a week, after the teenager had refused his request for drugs on credit, and ambushed him at the Peckforton Way flat of fellow addict Jayne Sharp.

Prosecutor Patrick Harrington said: “A young life was squandered because of the ravening hunger of a drug addict.” Judge Swift said the attack on Rhys was “brutally executed for gain and revenge”.

DCI Paul Rumney, who led the police case against Broughton, said: “This investigation highlights the misery drug dealing brings and the sentence reflects the disproportionate amount of violence used by Broughton in satisfying his own ends.”