A 34-year-old man has been found not guilty of murdering a disabled Charford resident near his home.

Andrew Edwards, who was lodging in Austin Road, Charford, was also cleared on an alternative charge of the manslaughter of 44-year-old Andrew Lammas, of Austin Road.

At Worcester Crown Court a jury of seven women and five men also acquitted Edwards on a charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice by concocting a false alibi.

His sister, Stephanie Hughes, aged 24, of Oak Apple Road, Catshill, and Wayne Goddard, 29, of Austin Road, also denied conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and were found not guilty.

The jury returned the unanimous verdicts after retiring for nearly five hours at the end of a two-and-a-half week trial.

Prosecutor James Burbidge QC alleged that Edwards confessed to several people that he had followed Mr Lammas from a Bromsgrove pub and battered him near his home. Mr Lammas died of brain injuries ten days after the attack on June 22 last year after suffering five blows to the head.

But Edwards told the court that he was at his sister's home in a different part of Bromsgrove at the time of the assault. He had only joked to people about the attack because he was fed up with gossip on the estate and people calling him a murderer. He had never met or spoken to Mr Lammas.

Patrick Thomas QC, defending, submitted that the prosecution case rested solely on alleged admissions which could not be relied upon.

One was from a failed police informant and another from a disturbed prison inmate. There was no forensic evidence against the defendant.

Earlier in the trial, Edwards and Ryan Irish, 19, of Humphrey Avenue, Bromsgrove, were cleared of witness intimidation on the directions of the trial judge.