Journalists were able to name a young man accused of murdering a father-of-five after he passed his 18th birthday.

Deividas Kuprescenka, from Lithuanian, was 17 when he was alleged to have “repeatedly assaulted” father-of-five Jabbar Ali in Peterborough on 17 January, Media Lawyer reports.

Mr Ali, who suffered severe head injuries, died six days after the assault at a Cambridge hospital.

Kuprescenka was charged with murder but the courts made an anonymity order under Section 39 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, when he appeared in court earlier this year.

Although Kuprescenka turned 18 a month after the alleged attack, the order was still in place when he went on trial at Ipswich Crown Court last week.

Press Association journalist Ella Pickover emailed Judge John Devaux, the trial judge, asking him to lift the order as the defendant was no longer a juvenile.

He replied that Kuprescenka could be named because the order had lapsed as he was no longer a juvenile.

In a separate case, representations made by the Press Association meant that a judge lifted an anonymity order concerning a 16-year-old in an alleged school massacre plot.

Ross McKnight is currently on trial at Manchester Crown Court, along with 18-year-old Matthew Swift, for planning to go into McKnight’s school in Manchester and shoot students and teachers as well as plant a bomb at a nearby shopping centre.

It is alleged the duo wanted to commit the acts to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the Columbine school massacre in America.

PA legal editor Mike Dodd wrote to the judge before the trial, asking for the order to be amended so that both defendants and the school could be identified.

McKnight had been given anonymity under Section 39 of the Children and Young Person’s Act (1933).

Mr Justice Royce, the trial judge, said a ban on naming McKnight and the school would “disembowel” any story the press attempted to write about the case.

But he ruled that the media could not publish the address of either defendant, both of whom deny conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions.