Boys beat tramp 'on their own'

Three boys charged with beating a tramp to death and throwing his body down a well in a bleak suburb of Paris were not goaded into doing it by adults, investigators said yesterday, AFP reports from Vitry-sur-Seine. Police now believe the boys acted on their own initiative and that two other vagrants at the scene did not actually witness the slaying on a strip of wasteland in the centre of Vitry-sur-Seine on 29 October.