A regional daily has overturned a court order enabling it to name a teenager who helped try to cover-up a brutal murder on its patch.

Chris Lemonius, 27, was beaten and hacked to death by a gang using golf clubs and machetes before being left lying in an alleyway in the Blackbird Leys area of Oxford.

Four men aged between 24 and 27 were convicted of the murder by a jury at Oxford Crown Court this week and a further 20-year-old man found guilty of manslaughter.

But the identity of a teenager who went to the scene after the attack in order to hide evidence had remained secret until the Oxford Mail challenged a court order protecting him from being named.

Court reporter William Walker successfully challenged the order after covering every day of the four-month trial.

It meant the paper was able to name Alfie Simms, 17, of Long Ground, Oxford, who was found guilty of conspiracy to pervert the course of public justice along with Saffon Fakir, 26, of Territorial Way, Oxford.

The court heard during the trial that Fakir and Simms had gone to the scene of the murder just minutes after Mr Lemonius was left for dead in a bid to seize weapons and hide any evidence of the attack.

Presiding Judge Ian Pringle QC agreed to lift the order protecting Simms given the significant public interest in naming him.

William told HTFP: “This was a large-scale murder trial which rocked the community and emotions at court were high as with any case on that scale coming to an end.

“I felt that given his conviction, his age being close to 18 and the enormous public interest in the trial locally we had a very good chance of overturning the order.

“Fortunately and despite arguments from his defence counsel the judge saw my point of view.

“I think regularly challenging the courts like this remains important. If I hadn’t bothered to stand up and make the challenge a man convicted of a serious offence would remain anonymous both to the local community and the wider public.”