The teenager with everything to live for who was 'butchered like an animal'

Dylan Bragger had everything in front of him. Aged 15 he was training to be a mechanic.

Friends on his course described him as friendly and helpful. To his family, he was a "big friendly giant with a heart of gold."

"Dylan was a boy who would light up the room when he walked in, he would have you laughing until you couldn’t breathe", his mum Sarah said. "He told us he loved us every day."

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On June 29, 2023, Dylan left his family home in Skelmersdale at around 7.30pm. He spent time with his older cousin Keagan and called his mum around 8:45pm to arrange a lift home. Tragically, he never made it.

As Dylan and Keagan stood by a footbridge which crossed Digmoor Road, they were ambushed by Felipe Figueiredo - a heavy set man, a decade older than Dylan, who was armed with a ferocious weapon. As the boys scrambled down the embankment to get away, Figueiredo caught up with Dylan and launched a vicious attack, inflicting 23 deadly knife wounds.

The black blade severed the teenager's jugular vein and vagus nerve, as the attacker launched blow after to blow on the defenceless teen. After killing Dylan, he chased Keagan onto the dual carriageway, holding the murder weapon behind him.

The first words he said were: "You stole my wife's motorbike."

Figueiredo was a family man, who lived on the Birleywood estate with his wife and five-year-old daughter. His wife, a special needs teaching assistant, cycled 40 minutes each way to her job, often in poor weather. In the days before the attack which saw her husband jailed for life, they had bought a 50cc scooter on finance, to make her journeys easier.

But before the couple had paid it off - or even insured it, the bike was