A U.K. man was sentenced Friday to four years in prison for killing his friend after he "poked" his girlfriend on Facebook, the Mirror reported.
Scott Humphrey pleaded guilty to manslaughter for brutally beating Richard Rovetto to death in an altercation during a cab ride in Nottingham, England.
"If you're such a good friend why did you poke my missus?" Humphrey asked Rovetto during the July 27 taxi ride, according to Nottingham prosecutors.
When the cab stopped in Top Valley, Humphrey punched his friend and knocked him down, causing him to bash his head on the pavement, prosecutors said at a court hearing, the Mirror reported.
Rovetto, a 29-year-old father of one, was rushed to a hospital where he died several hours later.
Sending a Facebook "poke" is often seen as a flirtatious gesture. Prosecutors said the cab driver recalled, "Richard Rovetto said he didn't know it was his girlfriend."
Humphrey fled the scene of the crime but eventually turned himself into the authorities, the newspaper reported. Defense attorneys argued Humphrey deeply regrets what he did and will remember that day for the rest of his life.
The argument seemed to sway Judge Gregory Dickinson, who acknowledged that "violence and death were the furthest things" from his mind.
"You didn't intend to kill him," Dickinson said as he issued the four-year sentence. "Part of the tragedy is that it's left to chance what happens. There will be a fight like this somewhere tonight and the person will get up and go home and the police will never hear about it."
But for the victim's brother-in-law, Jason Burley-Evans, the sentence was not severe enough.
"This was a waste of a life," Burley-Evans said according to the newspaper. "We feel the sentence wasn't the justice we wanted for Richard."
