Killer son was always trouble claims mother

The mother of a teenager who stabbed a father-to-be to death at a Wolverhampton pub has described her son's behaviour as a "nightmare".

Gemma Brown revealed her son Michael had been expelled from school at the age of 15, and had then been removed from the specialist programme he had been put into because he kicked his foot through a door. Ms Brown was giving evidence at Wolverhampton Crown Court, where her son is on trial accused of murdering Andrew Diack, aged 29.

Brown stabbed Mr Diack once through the heart after the victim smashed a bottle over his head at the Flying Dutchman pub in Merry Hill.

Brown, of Langley Road, Merry Hill, admits manslaughter on the grounds of provocation and that he was suffering from an "abnormality of mind", but denies murdering Mr Diack, of Stafford Road, Fordhouses, on February 7 last year.

Giving evidence during the court hearing yesterday, Ms Brown revealed that her 19-year-old son had been diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder at the age of eight.

She told the court yesterday: "We were always called into school.

"If the children were playing, he would take the lead.

"He was always double the size of most children and was always the dominant one.

"You were lucky if you got his attention for a couple of seconds."

Although bright at school, he had to go home at lunchtimes because staff could not cope with his disruptive behaviour.

He was once so impatient he smashed his grandfather's car windscreen just because he was fed up of waiting for him to come and give him a lift, she told the court.

Ms Brown said that his only real job had been a glass collector at Dunstall Race Course in Wolverhampton, which he left after just a few hours.

Asked about the side effects of her son's cannabis habit, she said it made him calmer.

But she said: "We've had 19 years of him being a nightmare", adding that she could not be sure how much of his behaviour was down to the drug.

The case is expected to finish early next week.