19 years in jail for brutal Scotland Street killing
Kieran Davies launched a relentless attack on his flatmate while high on drugs.
Last updated 25th Aug 2017
A man who murdered his former best friend in Edinburgh's New Town has been jailed for at least 19 years.
Kieran Davies (pic) was high on drugs when he viciously attacked his victim, Ashley Hawkins in a flat in Scotland Street last December.
At the High Court in Edinburgh, a judge told Davies he'd been convicted of a 'particularly brutal murder'.
Lord Boyd of Duncansby said: "You continue to deny your guilt and you have shown little remorse."
The judge acknowledged that Davies, 28, had had a difficult upbringing and told him: "You have not had the chances in life that may have set you a different path."
But Lord Boyd told him: "None of that excuses or mitigates the dreadful nature of this offence."
Davies viciously assaulted his victim with a hammer and a metal bar during the murder at a flat in Scotland Street on December 2 last year.
The court heard that he and Mr Hawkins had arrived in the city from Wales as friends but before the fatal attack the victim had revealed that Davies had put a knife to his throat.
Police who were called to the second floor flat at 7 Scotland Street and forced entry found Mr Hawkins, 32, of Barry in Wales, dead with catastrophic head injuries.
Unemployed Davies was the only other occupant of the locked property and was found topless, wearing jogging bottoms and trainers extensively stained with the dead man's blood.
The court heard that drug user Mr Hawkins had suffered at least 24 blows to the head and a heavy metal pole and broken hammer recovered from the flat could have been used as weapons in the fatal attack.
Defence counsel Keith Stewart QC, for Davies, said: "He maintains his position that he does not remember anything that happened in the flat.