“Smirking” murderer Daniel Reed boasted to friends and strangers about the killing he had just committed as police began the search to find him, Leeds Crown Court heard.

Immediately after leaving the murder scene, Reed used texts and a phone call to tell fellow student Scott Fletcher, 18, who told him to get on a train to come to his home in Burmantofts, Leeds. En route to the railway station, Reed called in at a taxi office to wash blood off his face and hair, telling staff there he had slit a man’s throat.

Fletcher’s response to his visit to the office was a text: “Laughing out loud, sick guy, delete all messages and phone calls.”

But there was no train at that time to Leeds where Fletcher lived. Outside the station Reed asked a man at a bus stop for a cigarette filter and told him what he had done, said Jonathan Sharpe, prosecuting. The man immediately alerted police and gave them Reed’s description. “His demeanour was blasé and nonchalant ... he remained calm, but seemed to have a smirk on his face,” he later told police.

As officers began the search for Reed, he called a friend who lived at the Scarcroft Project for homeless teenagers, collected him and a girl from the hostel and took them to a nearby park.

“How do you feel walking down here with a murderer?” he asked, and told them what he had done. They urged him to give himself up, but he refused.

By now it was nearly 2am, and Fletcher withdrew the offer of a bed through a text message. Reed was arrested shortly afterwards when he returned to the hostel with his friends. He deleted the majority of text messages on his phone at Fulford Road Police Station.

Fletcher pleaded guilty to assisting a murderer and was given an 18-month prison sentence suspended for two years on condition he does 100 hours’ unpaid work.

His solicitor advocate Timothy Jacobs said he was immature and petulant and had never been in trouble with the police before.

Detective Chief Inspector Mark Pearson, of North Yorkshire Police’s major investigation team, said: “My thoughts remain with Mr Skelton’s family today, particularly his mother and stepfather whose lives have been changed forever. They have had to endure the devastation brought on by the needless and senseless death of Shaun.

“While no sentence can compensate for the loss of a loved one, I hope today’s outcome brings a small measure of comfort to them, knowing that justice has been served and Reed is now facing the consequences of his terrible, unprovoked attack.”