Ian Tomlin: Battersea beating victim ‘confronted drug dealers’

A man found beaten to death on a housing estate in southwest London had repeatedly confronted local drug dealers, his father has said.

Former boxer Ian Tomlin, 46, was found on Wednesday evening in a pool of blood on a stairwell in the block of flats where he lived on the Doddington Estate in Battersea.

Police called to the flats following reports of a fight found a scene that a local resident described as “like a slaughterhouse”, according to the London Evening Standard.

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Witnesses say the father-of-two had been beaten and also “sustained stab wounds to the neck and head”, The Daily Telegraph reports.

Emergency services personnel spent 45 minutes trying to revive Tomlin, who drove council buses for the elderly and disabled, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

His 84-year-old father, Cecil, told the London Evening Standard that his son would regularly stand up to drug dealers on the estate, and that he feared the attack was a reprisal.

“There were always drug dealers hanging outside his home smoking - he told them to move on because his kids live there.”

Another neighbour described how residents were regularly disturbed by drug users. “Every night, they would ring all the buzzers asking to get in to go the dealer’s flat,” the resident told the Telegraph.

“Ian used to get really annoyed, especially when his kids were there, and he had confronted them in the past. He was not a violent person but he always wanted to protect his kids.”

Scotland Yard confirmed that a man was “found with injuries after having been assaulted” and that a post-mortem will take place.

Detectives from Homicide and Major Crime Command are investigating the death, which marks the 106th murder investigation launched in London this year.