A DRINKER is facing jail for killing his dwarf friend by spiking his beer can with a month's dose of anti-depressants as a 'joke'.

Lee Webster, 26, of Gravesend, Kent, tipped a lethal dose of 27 mirtazapine tablets into the beer of 4ft Jason Wood, 30, when he left the room to go to the toilet during a drinking session.

Mr Wood said ‘my beer tastes funny’ when he returned, but Webster told him to drink it, the Daily Mail reported.

Three hours later he was dead. Webster then kept quiet about lacing the drink with the 30mg pills at the session in Ramsgate, Kent, until a month later when he confessed to his father.

He told his sister Stephanie he had spiked the drink because he ‘thought it would be a laugh’.

A post-mortem found that Mr Wood, who weighed just 6st, had downed an amount of mirtazapine that had proved fatal in others.

Webster denied manslaughter and an alternative charge of administering poison or noxious substance as to endanger life.

But a Maidstone Crown Court jury took less than an hour to convict him of manslaughter. Webster claimed he had previously taken 14 or 15 of the tablets and they just made him go to sleep.

Originally published as Drinker killed dwarf with 27 tabs in beer