SENTENCING has been adjourned on a serial offender who killed the son of a Bury man while trying to mug him for a digital camera.

Scott Nichols admitted murdering photographer Lee Phipps during a bungled robbery on a footpath in South Shields, South Tyneside.

Judge David Hodson was due to hold a Newton Hearing on Monday at Newcastle Crown Court to determine whether the defendant intended to kill or only cause serious harm. However, the case was adjourned until the New Year to allow psychiatric reports to be prepared. A date for the hearing has yet to be fixed.

The court was told that 31-year-old Lee Phipps was stabbed several times, including in the heart, by the 21-year-old defendant as he went to photograph snow-covered hills in March this year. He tried to stagger to his nearby home where he lived with his 53-year-old mother, but collapsed on an elderly woman's doorstep, where he died.

Nichols, of Borough Road, South Shields, pleaded guilty to murder on the basis that he only used the knife to escape as Mr Phipps tried to apprehend him. The prosecution rejected this and said Nichols' intention was to kill.

After the hearing, Lee's father Des, who lives in Bury, expressed his anger that Nichols was free to kill despite having 37 previous convictions.