HE was on the verge of a new life.

Teenager Luke Woolf wanted to be a soldier. He had signed the applications form, attended two interviews and was waiting to undergo the physical examination.

But in the early hours of October 25, 2008, he suffered devastating head injuries at a home for young homeless and single men.

What happened at the Rainbow Project home in Southampton only his killer Scott Townson knows.

Yesterday he was convicted of manslaughter but acquitted of murder. He was further remanded in custody to await sentence.

Luke should not have been there. He had been banned for ignoring house rules but never handed in his keys.

A few days later, he got back in and was dressed in only a T-shirt and boxer shorts when he was repeatedly punched and kicked by Townson, high on a cocktail of lager, cider, Ecstasy and cocaine – at a time when he was on a drug rehabilitation course.

There were no independent witnesses, and Townson – no stranger to the courts with nine previous convictions for violence and drugs – claimed he had acted in self-defence. He maintained he thought an intruder had attacked him as he opened the lounge door in darkness and did not realise until he switched the lights on it was Luke.

But the prosecution said he had beaten up the teenager so badly his mother couldn’t recognise him.

Townson told jurors at Salisbury Crown Court how he put the bleeding teenager on his bike, but he had only gone a few yards when he fell off and lay groaning in the road.

He then dragged him across the pavement and into a children’s park, rejecting the advice of his mother – who he called – to ring the emergency services. Almost two hours passed before his girlfriend did and paramedics found him in a coma.

He died several months later from pneumonia without regaining consciousness.

Inside the house in Northam, detectives found blood on the lounge carpet and a wall, and a pair of bloodstained shoes were seized from Townson’s room.

He lay low in Southampton for three days, before handing himself into the police.

Jurors took less than three hours at the end of a ten-day trial to convict Townson, of Radcliffe Road, Northam.

Judge Keith Cutler warned Townson that his sentence may be “a significant and substantial term. The pre-sentence report will give me more information about your background, attitude and whether you are a dangerous offender.”

Prosecuting barrister Adam Feest handed him a letter from Luke’s mother about how she had been affected by his death, but the contents were not made public.

After the hearing his aunt Louise Gillingham said: “Whatever happened today, whether he was found guilty of murder or manslaughter or found not guilty, would not bring Luke back.

“I have lost my nephew and my sons their cousin who they called big brother. He was a happy, jokey person who liked to have laugh.”