Rhys Jones’s dad blasts his son’s murderer for using phone in jail to woo a woman

RHYS Jones’s dad has blasted his son’s murderer for using a phone in jail to woo a woman who then visited him.

Steve Jones, 57, said Sean Mercer’s claim to be a model prisoner was “blown out of the water” by The Sun’s story earlier this week. And he hopes it ends any chances of the killer’s early release.

Mercer, who shot 11-year-old Rhys dead as he walked home from football practice in Croxteth, Merseyside, in 2007 is said to have been in touch with the woman for up to eight months.

Mercer got a minimum of 22 years over the 2007 shooting of Rhys, 11, in Croxteth, Merseyside.

In letters seen by The Sun, he wrote to her describing how he "accidentally hurt someone" and said he hopes to become a dad-of-two in the future.

Now 29, he argues he is entitled to a tariff review because he was a juvenile at the time.

But we revealed he has known the woman eight months after they met on Instagram.

Steve said: “Things like this just brings Rhys' death back for the whole family.

“If Mercer was serious about putting in a legal challenge about how he's a model prisoner, then he's blown that out of the water by having a mobile phone while in prison.

“It beggars belief how these things come out.

"There's got to be a way of discovering phones in prison, I don't accept there's no way to track it.

"Now it's known Mercer has a phone, the authorities should be all over him.

"It's galling that he has access to one."

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