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A Brexiter died just hours after being beaten and threatened he would be burned alive by his Remain-supporting neighbour in a row over the result of the EU referendum .

Duncan Keating, 58, was hit with a parasol, thumped repeatedly, and threatened he would be set alight in an attack at a retirement complex.

The incident took place just days after the result, the Manchester Evening News reports.

Six hours after being beaten up by neighbour and Remain supporter Graham Dunne in their communal garden, Leave voter Mr Keating was found dead in his room.

A pathologist found he suffered fatal breathing difficulties after alcohol and drug consumption and the cause of death was given as positional asphyxiation.

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But a court heard how the tragic course of events unfolded at Victoria Square, a grade II-listed sheltered housing complex in Ancoats - two days after the UK’s historic vote to leave the European Union.

Dunne has now been jailed for assaulting the late Mr Keating, and another man who he attacked with a hammer in an earlier incident.

Dunne, 62, was locked up for four years and five months at Manchester Crown Court after admitting assault occasioning actual bodily harm against Mr Keating.

He also admitted causing grievous bodily harm to a 56-year-old man, and a charge of criminal damage, dating back to July last year.

Disturbing CCTV captured the attack on Mr Keating.

(Image: MEN)

He was planting seedlings in the communal garden of his home at Victoria Square, Ancoats, when he started a conversation with Dunne about the referendum, asking him which way he had voted.

Both men had been drinking that day, and when Dunne found out Mr Keating was a Leaver, he flew into a rage.

Prosecutor Maria Brannan told court: “The defendant became aggressive, asking if he had children, saying ****ing think about their generation, not yours’.”

He then brought up the fact that Mr Keating had accidentally flooded another resident’s flat by leaving a tap on, adding: “I’m going to have you, let’s ****ing sort this out.”

Over the next 15 minutes appalled witnesses saw Dunne haranguing, shoving and punching the helpless victim, who offered no resistance.

Mr Keating can be seen falling heavily against a stone centrepiece after being pushed over a distance of several feet. One witness saw Dunne douse the victim with fertiliser before saying: “I’m gonna burn you.”

(Image: MEN)

Police turned up but officers left after the men told them there was no problem. Later, Mr Keating was seen with a tennis ball sized swelling to the left side of his jaw, and a large swelling on his left arm. He described it to a witness as the result of ‘handbags’.

Dunne went to Mr Keating’s flat three times in the hours before the victim was found dead, in a kneeling position on the floor by his bed, at 7.25pm.

Dunne’s blood was recovered from the wall outside the room, and he later complained that the victim had broken his nose.

A pathologist concluded that Mr Keating had died from positional asphyxia and intoxication through consumption of alcohol, methadone and cannabis.

At the time, Dunne was on bail for smashing up his friend’s flat in Miles Platting with a hammer, before hitting him with it in July 2015. The victim suffered a fractured collarbone, a broken rib, a punctured lung and ‘massive’ bruising.

Dunne has convictions stretching back to 1968, but hadn’t been in trouble for twenty years until the hammer attack.

Keith Harrison, defending Dunne, said: “He’s not a man with a history of violence, and he’s been out of trouble for a very long time.

“In 2014 his wife, after a serious long illness, died after a 40-year marriage, and it left him in total ruin. He began drinking, that’s not the responsibility of these two complainants obviously, but it does explain why there was a complete sea change in his behaviour and character. Something went seriously wrong with his life.”

Sentencing Dunne, Judge Martin Rudland said of Duncan Keating’s death: “Grave consideration has been given between this event, and that tragic death, and the consultant pathologist has concluded his death was due to matters unrelated to the assault.”

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Sending him down, the judge told Dunne: “We see from the glaring CCTV footage of the event that you picked on him and you bullied him and you wouldn’t let up.

“You began by using a parasol, then we watch you punch him while he’s lying backwards in a wooden chair in the garden, and you then pursue him round the garden, shouting at him, berating him.

“He is doing nothing but backing away from you at all times, but you goad him, you harass him, you follow him, you try and out-step him and out-manoeuvre him, and when you get close to him you punch him, not once, not twice but three times.

“It was an unpleasant, brazen, bullying event.

"There is no way you would have behaved as you did to someone who was of your size and strength, and that’s quite apparent from the way in which you teased and goaded him.”