A killer, who brutally beat a New Addington dad-of-nine to death because he thought he was a drug dealer, was today jailed for 12 years.

Jason Lodge, 39, repeatedly stamped on "defenceless" David Petch's head on his own doorstep in Wayside, Fieldway on April 14 last year.

Lodge, who a jury found not guilty of murder but convicted of manslaughter last month, killed 55-year-old Mr Petch after letting himself into his flat with girlfriend Cherri Gilmartin, 37.

The couple, who lived in Uvedale Crescent with their eight children at the time, believed Mr Petch had been selling Miss Gilmartin's drug addict sister cocaine.

Sentencing Lodge at the Old Bailey this morning, Judge Anthony Morris said Mr Petch was probably "terrified" to have been confronted by two strangers in his own bedroom.

Your Local Guardian: Jason Lodge was found guilty of manslaughter on Monday

Jason Lodge was jailed for 12 years for killing David Petch

He accepted Mr Petch had reached for a baseball in an attempt to make them leave, but added Lodge's response had been "wildly excessive".

Mr Morris told Lodge: "I'm satisfied that your act was so viscious and so prolonged that you intended to kill him and killed him through loss of self-control."

He added "the irony of the case" was that Gilmartin, who insisted on visiting Mr Petch on the night he died and also hit him with a baseball bat, had been cleared of all charges.

Mr Morris said: "Cherri Gilmartin bears a large moral responsibility for what took place that night. She will have to live with the consequences."

Your Local Guardian: Cherri Gilmartin leaving court today

Cherri Gilmartin was cleared of all charges, but bore a "moral responsibility" for Mr Petch's death

A statement from Mr Petch's family, read out in court by prosecutor Simon Denison, revealed loved ones were still struggling to cope with his death.

Tina Petch, his first wife from a marriage in 1976, said: "David was a lovely man who loved all his children.

"He was well-known in New Addington. In fact, I would go as far as to say everyone knew him.

"We all feel a bit lost now, not having him.

"It would be hard however he had died, but to be taken from your family, not by illness or accident, but on such horrific terms, is something for which no words are enough."

Carly, one of Mr Petch's three children from his first marriage, had been due to wed this year but cancelled the ceremony as she struggled with grief.