A NEWPORT drug dealer has been found guilty of the manslaughter of a father over an unpaid £500 debt.

John Junior Phillips, 28, known as JJ, of Baird Close, Malpas, was convicted by a jury over the killing of Anthony Winter.

He was acquitted of murder.

A 17-year-old boy, from Cardiff, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was also found guilty of manslaughter but cleared of murder.

They had been on trial with a 17-year-old girl, also from Cardiff, who was found not guilty of murder. She admitted perverting the course of justice.

Phillips’ girlfriend at the time, Lauren Hutchinson, aged 19, of Munnings Drive, Newport, also pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice.

A fifth defendant, James Jones, aged 19, of Bedwas Close, St Mellons, Cardiff, admitted murder before the trial at Cardiff Crown Court began.

Prosecutor Christopher Clee QC told the jury how the 32-year-old Mr Winter was tortured at a Newport flat before he was later fatally stabbed in woodland.

He said that the drug addict was lured to an apartment in the St Julians area of the city where young mum Hutchinson lived.

The father-of-one was savagely beaten at this Munnings Drive address before he was fatally knifed in the leg at Cath Cobb Woodland in the Cardiff suburb of St Mellons on the morning of November 22 last year.

In his closing speech to the jury, Mr Clee said: “He (Phillips), we say, orchestrated the whole thing.

“Taking a lead in teaching a lesson to those who do not pay their debts."

William Hughes QC, for Phillips, told the jury: “Having seen him and heard from him, you might not like him.

“Not liking him does not mean he is guilty of murder, as charged by the Crown.”

He stressed to them that the defendant was not there at the time of the killing.

The teenage boy told the court he took no part in the beating of Mr Winter who he claimed owed Jones and Phillips money and that the two were involved together in a “drug enterprise”.

The girl said she tried to prevent the victim, who was from the Llanedeyrn area of Cardiff, from being stabbed.

The judge, Mrs Justice Jefford, adjourned sentence until Tuesday, July 16 and remanded all the defendants in custody.