A jockey has admitted killing a man who was injured in a fight outside a pub.
Levi Williams, 26, had been charged with the murder of Richard Wingrove, 71, after the pensioner died ten days after the altercation in Newmarket, Suffolk, the historic home of horse racing.
The case was due to go to trial but the Crown Prosecution accepted his guilty plea to manslaughter at Peterborough Crown Court.
Williams – whose mother told an earlier hearing it had been his dream to be a jockey ‘since he was knee high’ – was granted bail and will be sentenced on June 4.
Suffolk Police were called to reports of an altercation involving four people on Newmarket High Street at 3.40pm on March 8 last year.
Williams wept in the dock during the earlier hearing at Cambridge Crown Court, where prosecutor Peter Gair said Mr Wingrove and his son Jamie had been drinking at the Waggon and Horses pub in the town.
They were thrown out by the landlord after he decided they had drunk enough and the pair ‘tried to return to the pub on a number of occasions’ but were ejected again.
Williams and a jockey friend who had been in the pub watching horse racing left to catch a taxi to go back to work when they became involved in a ‘confrontation’ with the father and son.
This, Mr Gair said, ‘resulted in a physical punching fight in the high street’.
‘During the fighting, this defendant was seen to throw one punch to Mr Wingrove senior and a little later one punched him again or hit him in the chest, which caused Mr Wingrove to fall to the pavement,’ he told the court.
‘It caused an injury which resulted in his death. He never regained consciousness and his life support was turned off on March 18.’
Two other men sustained injuries during the altercation and were taken to the same hospital, Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, before being discharged, the hearing was told.
Williams was initially arrested on suspicion of assault causing grievous bodily harm but was rearrested following Mr Wingrove’s death and charged with murder.
The jockey’s partner, Lille May, sobbed in the public gallery when he appeared in the Cambridge court.
His mother, Hayley Williams, described how it had been his childhood ambition to enter the racing world and he had left home when he was 16 to go to the British Racing School in Newmarket.
A 24-year-old man who was arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm, and a 45-year-old man who was arrested on suspicion of affray, have been released under investigation while inquiries continue.
Flat rider Williams had won 12 races in his 156-ride career.
It was almost derailed previously when he was suspended for 18 months after testing positive for the second time for cocaine.
He was given the ban in September 2023 after he took drugs in a pub toilet three days before a race.
A British Horseracing Authority judicial panel heard that he also ‘consumed a quantity of alcohol such that he was intoxicated’.
Williams didn’t buy the Class A drug but was ‘offered it by someone else’.
The positive test was taken at Windsor racecourse before Williams rode the following day, May 2, at Wolverhampton – where he received an 18-day improper riding bam and a seven-day whip suspension.
Williams had previously been banned for six months in 2021 following a positive test for cannabis and cocaine.
He was given his licence again on the condition that he ‘practice continued abstinence from all substances’.
Newmarket is the largest training center for thoroughbreds in Britain.
Racing was recorded there in the time of James I and Charles II inaugurated the historic Newmarket Town Plate race in 1665 or 1666. He he became the first and only reigning monarch to win a race in 1671.
Newmarket Racecourse has two premier courses – the Rowley Mile and the July Course – which host two of the country’s five Classic Races, the 1000 and 2000 Guineas.
