Guilty: The teenage girl who smiled as she kicked gay civil servant to death

The court heard Ruby Thomas, 18, screamed 'f***ing faggots' before kicking the victim as he lay on the floor. She is pictured in April this year

A former public schoolgirl who hurled homophobic abuse at a gay civil servant before kicking and stamping on him during a deadly attack was facing jail today.

Ruby Thomas, 18, was found guilty of the manslaughter of 62-year-old Ian Baynham, who died 18 days after the drink-fuelled assault in London's Trafalgar Square.

Police later found his blood smeared on her handbag and the ballet pumps she was wearing as she kicked him.

The court heard she smiled as she 'put the boot into' Mr Baynham after he was knocked to the ground by another teenager, Joel Alexander.

Thomas's ex-boyfriend told the Old Bailey that the blonde teenager, of Anerley, south east London, was 'not the type of girl' to have done it.

But jurors did not agree and convicted her of manslaughter, along with Alexander, 20, of Thornton Heath, south east London.

A third defendant, 18-year-old Rachael Burke, of Upper Norwood, south east London, was found guilty of affray at an earlier trial.

Thomas, a former pupil at £12,000-a-year Sydenham High School for Girls, had a previous record for violence.

She was just 15 when she assaulted a bus driver in Northumberland Avenue in December 2007, a short walk from where the attack on Mr Baynham took place.

On the night Mr Baynham was attacked in September last year Thomas was said to have been 'off her face', acting in a 'lairy, mouthy' way, and flirting with random men.

The court heard that Thomas screamed 'f******faggots' at the victim and his friend Philip Brown.

When Mr Baynham confronted her, there was a scuffle during which she hit him with her handbag and he grabbed it.

Alexander then ran up and knocked him to the ground, causing a severe brain injury as his head struck the pavement.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, said: 'That did not suffice. There is evidence that the female defendants then began putting the boot into Mr Baynham, who was still prone on his back, clearly unconscious and in distress.'

He said the girls were 'fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol' and one witness likened the attack to a scene from the film A Clockwork Orange.

'Shocked onlookers saw repeated stamping to his chest and forceful kicks to his head,' said Mr Altman.

Thomas looked distraught as the verdicts were returned and put her head in her hands.

Both defendants will be sentenced in the new year.

Mr Baynham was in the first week of a new job as a team leader in border control at the Home Office when he was killed.

The day before the attack, he had phoned his sister Jenny Baynham and told her how much he was enjoying the new role.

She was at his bedside when he died from a brain injury sustained during the assault, together with Mr Baynham's friend George Richardson.

Mr Richardson described the victim as 'a perfectly normal man who just happened to be gay'.

The court heard that the teenagers who attacked him had been drinking before they set upon him outside South Africa House on September 25 last year.

One witness overheard the group talking about two other men walking past them earlier holding hands, with one of the girls saying 'We can do them' and a youth replying 'Of course we can'.

Ian Baynham, 62, who suffered fatal head injuries
 in an assault close to the South African High
 Commission, in Trafalgar Square

Guilty: Joel Alexander, 19, arriving at the Old Bailey
 in London. He was found guilty of Mr Baynham's
manslaughter. Rachael Burke, 18, of Three Oaks,
East Sussex, convicted of affray

10.58pm: Ian Baynham bleeds from a head injury as a paramedic administers treatment (his face is pixelated). He died 18 days after the attack

When Mr Baynham and Mr Brown appeared, Thomas began making homophobic comments.

Mr Baynham was heard to say to her 'No, I don't want to sleep with you' and a comment that began 'I may be gay but...'.

A scuffle broke out and Alexander, who had been with Thomas's group, ran up and punched the victim to the ground.

Mr Brown said his friend 'fell like a corpse', hitting his head on the pavement with a 'crunching noise'.

Alexander, a sports science student at the University of East London, later explained that he felt he 'had to act' because 'a grown man shouldn't hit a girl'.

His punch knocked Mr Baynham out, leaving him lying on the pavement making a snoring noise and with blood pouring from his ear, nose and mouth.

Jamie Devlin, another teenager who was there, saw Thomas stamp on his stomach and kick him in the head while calling him a 'dickhead' and saying 'f you'.

A further witness, Jill Shukla, and her husband tried to shield their teenage daughter and her friends from the scenes of violence as they walked by after a night out at the Palladium to celebrate her 16th birthday.

She said: 'I saw the girl stamping on him repeatedly with force, probably four or five times. She was smiling.'

The attackers ran off. In a Facebook chat the next day, Thomas joked about her row with 'some c   ' who pulled her bag, adding: 'Ha, ha, ha.'

dailymail.co.uk By DAILY MAIL REPORTER