A BLACKBURN man who garrotted a neighbour in California has been told he cannot serve his life sentence in the UK.

Andrew Sharkey is facing more than 32 years in jail for murdering a pensioner near San Francisco.

The 38-year-old, who grew up in Mowbray Avenue, Higher Croft, asked if he could return to England to be near a sick relative.

But a judge has rejected the request, along with Sharkey’s last-ditch legal bid to withdraw his earlier guilty plea.

The two decisions mean Sharkey will be at least 70-years-old when he is released from prison.

Sharkey, a former Our Lady of Perpetual Succour Primary School and Our Lady and St John Catholic Arts College pupil, emigrated to America in his late teens.

The medical cannabis grower had vehemently denied being Michael van Tillman’s killer in jailhouse interviews, instead blaming a business associate for the crime on June 25, 2009.

He said Gary Scott, 58, slipped a steel wire around the 67-year-old’s throat while the two were stealing $45,000 in cash from a drawer in his Guerneville home, above the garage where Sharkey and Scott legally grew cannabis.

However, Scott walked free from court after only being charged as an accessory to the first-degree murder.

During his sentencing at Sonoma County Superior Court last month, Sharkey, who also goes by the name Andrew Dada, had tried to withdraw his ‘no contest’ plea, saying his legal team had provided ineffective counsel.

He claimed his attorney, Geoffrey Dunham, urged him to accept a plea bargain of 32 years to life to avoid a jury conviction, which could have sent him to prison for life without parole. He said this was despite him saying he was not the killer.

But in a private hearing this week Judge Arthur Wick found that Sharkey received adequate legal counsel from Mr Dunham.

Judge Wick also ruled Sharkey knew what he was doing when he agreed to the deal, in which he admitted murder.

During the hearing Sharkey argued that he had been promised a transfer to a British prison, where he could be near an ailing relative.

Prosecutors opposed the move and Judge Wick said there was no authority for such a promise.

According to the terms of his plea agreement, Sharkey will serve his sentence in California and be deported upon his release.

He is currently being held at Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility in Santa Rosa. He will be officially sentenced on February 24.

A former friend of Sharkey, who still has family in Blackburn, said her mother had worked with him at the old Moat House Hotel in Preston New Road when he was around 17.

She described him as “a good lad”.

The woman said: “He was a part time pot washer and glass collector.

“My mum took him under her wing a bit. I had two younger brothers and he was great with them.

“He was a little bit misunderstood at times, but he was good to us.

“He said he was moving to America because his dad lived there.

“This is awful for the victim’s family of course, but we don’t know the full situation.

“But obviously he was involved in some respect and if he’s done it he deserves everything he gets.”

A former school friend, who also did not wish to be named, said Sharkey was a ‘troubled teenager’.

He said: “I knew him from when he was about 12. He went to Our Lady and St John when I was there. He was a bit of a bad lad.”