Man who killed dwarf friend by putting 27 anti-depressant tablets into his pint as a joke is jailed for five years

Lee Webster tipped a lethal 27 mirtazapine tablets into Jason Wood's beer can when he left it to go to the toilet

A drinker who killed his dwarf friend by spiking his beer with a month’s dose of anti-depressants as a ‘joke’, has today been jailed for five years.
Lee Webster tipped a lethal 27 mirtazapine tablets into Jason Wood’s beer can when he left it to go to the toilet.
Mr Wood, 30, who was 4ft tall and weighed just six stone, noted his beer ‘tasted funny’ when he returned but downed the drink when Webster told him it was fine.
He died three hours later.
Webster, 26, kept quiet about lacing the drink with the 30mg pills until a month later when he confessed to his father.
He also told his sister Stephanie he had spiked the drink during the drinking session in Ramsgate, Kent because he ‘thought it would be a laugh’.
Webster, of Gravesend, denied manslaughter but was convicted in less than an hour by a jury at Maidstone Crown Court.
Judge Philip Statman jailed him for four and a half years for manslaughter and a further six months for perverting the course of justice.
He told him: 'Jason Wood was a comparatively young man and his life was tragically cut short. You were his friend.
'Nobody suggests for one moment you had any desire to end his life. At the time you were an experienced user of the prescribed Mirtazapine.
'You knew what the effects of Mirtazapine were as a regular user of the drug.'