FOUR men who slashed and stabbed a teenager to death after a drugs binge, have been jailed for life.

David Wheaton, aged 19, from Welling, was left to bleed to death in an alleyway. His last agonising moments were captured on CCTV.

An Old Bailey jury took 21 hours to convict Wesley Timon, aged 21, of Heavitree Road, Plumstead; Bradley Hutton, aged 22, of Jefferson Walk, Woolwich; James O'Brien, aged 20, of Cade Tyler House, Blackheath Hill, Greenwich, and Ian Cowling, aged 19, of Plumbridge Street, Greenwich, of murder.

The court heard how the four had been high on drugs after taking £300 worth of cocaine and ecstasy during a night out in February.

Timon, the ringleader, argued with Mr Wheaton in TJ's nightclub in Woolwich after alleging he had chatted up a girlfriend.

Bouncers separated the two, but Mr Wheaton was said to have been "ashen faced" after the confrontation.

Timon had three other fights during the evening before he went to Hutton's house and took cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy. There he recruited the three others for his revenge on Mr Wheaton.

Later they got into a car driven by Cowley and, armed with two 12-inch kitchen knives, went looking for Mr Wheaton, tracking him down by calling him on his mobile phone.

When they found him on the Glyndon Estate in Plumstead, they burst out of the car.

Mr Wheaton ran to a friend's house but no-one answered and he was trapped, unarmed, by the gang in the front garden.

The gang repeatedly slashed Mr Wheaton across the buttocks and stabbed him in the buttocks, shoulder and chest a dozen times. The fatal wound was so forceful it penetrated his breast bone and pierced his heart.

One of the gang, who have all been known to police since their early teens and have a string of previous convictions, was heard to urge "stab him in the head."

Ordering he should spend at least 18 years in jail, Judge Stephen Kramer QC told Timon: "Your intentions were grotesquely clear. You robbed a family of a well-loved son."

The other three will serve a minimum of 16 years in jail.