Two alleged muggers, one of them from Watford, accused of chasing a victim onto railway tracks, where he was fatally hit by a 100 mph express train, were acquitted of manslaughter today.

The trial judge ruled that the evidence against them was too weak.

Apprentice electrician Lewis Ghessen, 22, had run into Harrow and Wealdstone station at 8.40pm and sprinted along the platform allegedly in a bid to escape the pair. In a call on his mobile phone for help he told the operator he feared for his life and was being pursued by "mad guys," Isleworth Crown Court was told.

Dominic Morris, 19, of Leavesden Road, Watford and a 16 year-old Harrow youth, who for legal reasons cannot be named, were found not guilty of manslaughter and attempting to rob Mr Ghessen on September 25, last year on the direction of the Recorder of Kensington and Chelsea Judge Richard McGregor-Johnson.

He told the jurors: "An allegation of manslaughter is a serious allegation, but a charge in these circumstances is technical and difficult to prove.

"In my view the evidence of the prosecution does not reach the necessary level of a case to answer on either of these two counts and the defendants have to be found not guilty."