A MAN has been charged with the murder of a keen photographer who was stabbed through the heart on his way to take pictures of snow-covered hills near his home.
The body of 31-year-old Lee Phipps was discovered close to a path less than a mile from his South Tyneside home on March 2.
Three men were arrested on suspicion of murder and released on police bail.
On Saturday, Scott Trevor Nicholls, 20, of Borough Road, South Shields, was charged with murder and will appear at South Tyneside Magistrates' Court this morning.
On Thursday, police staged a reconstruction of Mr Phipps' last known movements, with a police officer retracing his route wearing identical clothes and carrying an identical camera bag.
A few weeks ago his father, Des Phipps, 53, who lives in the Bury area, travelled to South Tyneside to make an emotional appeal for help to catch the killer.
Mr Phipps' mother, who is of Somali descent, had made a number of complaints to Northumbria Police claiming her family had suffered racist harassment on hundreds of occasions.
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