Tom Storey KC and Peter Byrne prosecute case of householder shooting dead an intruder

Tom Storey KC and Peter Byrne were instructed to prosecute the case at Leeds Crown Court in which Adrian Frost was charged with the murder of Connor Batty. Batty was one of three men who had chosen to break into Frost’s home address in Hemsworth in order to steal the crop of cannabis which he was growing there; they were armed with an imitation Glock pistol (in fact a BB air gun), a pickaxe handle and a pair of garden shears.  What they did not know was that Frost had armed himself against just such an event, with an array of weapons including a sawn-off shotgun (which he himself had shortened), over 500 shotgun cartridges, multiple machetes, two baseball bats, cannisters of CS spray, butterfly and flick knives and an extendable metal baton.  When Batty walked from the dining room into the hallway of the house, Frost, using the sawn-off shotgun, shot him in the chest from his position on the stairs, from a distance of less than 1.4 metres.  Frost claimed that he had been acting in self-defence when he did so, but this defence was disproved by the prosecution, with the jury convicting Frost of Batty’s murder.  On 13^th July 2026, Adrian Frost was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term to be served of 27 years less the time he had spent on remand.

Tom Storey KC and Peter Byrne were instructed by Julian Briggs of the CPS Complex Casework Unit, Yorkshire & Humberside, and assisted by officers from West Yorkshire Police Homicide and Major Enquiry Team. 

Hemsworth man who shot and killed drug-stealing burglar jailed for life – BBC News

Drug dealer who joked ‘do you want an aspirin’ after shooting intruder dead sealed fate at trial – Leeds Live

Authors

Tom Storey KC

Call 1993 | Silk 2024

Peter Byrne

Call 2012