Vigilante pair jailed for 40 years for murder

Dan Melnyk has been convicted of murdering Ecclefechan man Kevin McKay. Picture: Contributed

Dean Melnyk, 20, and Andrew Brown, 23, were each imprisoned for a minimum of 20 years yesterday for the murder of dealer Kevin MacKay, 39.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard how the pair took the law into their own hands hours after the funeral of their friend Jamie Abba.

They believed that Mr MacKay had supplied the drug that killed 19-year-old Mr Abba, who was known as Jabba.

The two men travelled from Lockerbie to Ecclefechan in Dumfries and Galloway and repeatedly stabbed Mr MacKay in a frenzied revenge attack last August.

Passing sentence, Lord Armstrong told Melnyk and Brown: “You have been convicted of carrying out a brutal attack which resulted in the death of Kevin MacKay. This incident did not happen on the spur of the moment. It was premeditated. You wrongly took justice into your own hands.

“You travelled from Lockerbie to Ecclefechan with long-bladed weapons and inflicted a number of injuries on your victim.

“The court has heard that your victim suffered 80 injuries which were inflicted on the vital organs.”

Lord Armstrong continued: “The court has also heard evidence that without immediate medical attention, your victim could not have survived more than five to ten minutes.

“This was an intensely violent attack. The only sentence for murder is life imprisonment.”

Melnyk, of Lockerbie, and Brown, of Ecclefechan, were convicted following proceedings at the High Court in Glasgow in April. Sentence had been deferred in order for the court to obtain reports about the pair’s characters.

During the trial, Melnyk told jurors he was “drunk and angry” when he and Brown went to Ecclefechan on 22 August last year and attacked Mr MacKay, known as Kesty.

The court heard that at Mr Abba’s wake, Melnyk got angry and Brown, known as Buster, spoke to him.

Melnyk told the High Court: “Buster said, ‘We’ll give Kesty a kicking’ to cheer me up.”

He told the court the pair got a lift to Ecclefechan and after going into another house in the village, Brown led him to where Mr MacKay was staying.

He added: “We had a knife each. I saw Buster stabbing Kesty. Buster was shouting, ‘You killed Jabba, Kesty’.

“Kesty grabbed my leg. Buster kicked him off and I began stabbing Kesty.”

The court heard that after the killing, Melnyk went to a friend’s house in Lockerbie and told him: “I think I’ve killed Kesty.”

As the verdict of murder against Melnyk was delivered, Mr MacKay’s family and friends applauded.

Melnyk had denied murder but admitted culpable homicide on the grounds of diminished responsibility. However, this claim was rejected by the jury.

Minutes after pleading guilty to murder, Brown shouted to Mr MacKay’s daughter Chelsea in the public gallery: “I had never meant to murder Kesty.”

Yesterday Brown’s advocate, Alice Taggart, told the court that her client was now full of remorse for his role in the murder.

Melnyk’s advocate, Sarah Livingstone, also said her client had expressed remorse.