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Final minutes of victim attacked on way home
JONATHAN Harper had only drunk half of his pint of Strongbow before he announced he was going home, friends said.
He was off on holiday to see his sister in Dubai the following morning and he even had the tickets on him.
He left his local, the Little Mester on Nursery Road, at 9.20pm on Friday evening. By 9.30pm he was dead in the road not 200 yards away, after being felled by a punch and hit by a passing car.
Drinking pals who paid tribute to him yesterday are still wrestling with incomprehension at how he met his violent death.
A friend, who drank the cider he left, said: "It makes me sick to think I was finishing off his final pint at the very moment he died. I wish I'd never touched it.
"I just can't believe he won't be back in here ever again - and over what? A cigarette. It's absolutely senseless, the whole village is in shock."
You can leave a tribute to Jonathan in our book of condolence, click here
Mr Harper attended Dinnington Comprehensive and worked for a time in the hotel trade and as a food packer at Hazlewood Foods in Wales, near Sheffield, before being made redundant six months ago.
He never left home and continued to live with his mum Ida after his father died two years ago.
Mr Harper leaves three sisters - one of whom is returning from Dubai - and a brother.
Friends said he loved painting and was rarely without his beloved bicycle.
A former school friend said: "He was highly intelligent and articulate but a sensitive soul and not very streetwise. He had a breakdown when his father died.
"He was private and dignified, I'd never seen him drunk and he wouldn't hurt a fly."
A drinker said a group of eight young teenagers hung around in Dinnington Park and would often get into trouble.
He added: "I know the lad who has been arrested and he's quiet. It's hard to believe he might have done something like this, he was egged on by his mates."
READ MORE: Street attack boy, 15, murder arrest
Police moved swiftly to describe Mr Harper's death, which comes after the death of 39-year-old Craig Wass who confronted a group of youths outside his home in Loxley, as an "isolated incident".
Officers have been conducting high-visibility patrols in North Anston to reassure residents.
But the deaths of two men in less than a week in Sheffield have left some people uneasy.
Mr Wass died last Saturday after violence flared when he asked a gang of yobs to move away from his home on Phillips Road.
A North Anston resident said: "There was a time you would go and confront youngsters and they would accept the telling off, but now you can't challenge anyone.
"The kids are generally well behaved here but there is a lack of things for them to do and boredom breeds all kinds of behaviour."
Another resident said: "There's a lot of under age drinking in Greenlands Park but the community support officers are around a lot and move them on. We rarely see the real police."
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Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 26 May 2012
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