Neighbour recalls finding stab victim dazed and bleeding
A mother-of-four told a jury of finding her friend and neighbour on the doorstep bleeding heavily from a fatal stab wound after being attacked by a teenage gang armed with Rambo and Zombie knives.
Natasha Lawler had been alerted by the sound of banging outside her first-floor Brierley Hill flat in the early hours of January 6 last year, the court heard.
Her young son then came to her 'obviously panicked and quite upset' and told her about something he had seen, she said. Miss Lawler told police at the time he had been 'as white as a ghost'.
The witness, who was shielded from the dock by a screen, then heard a louder thump and opened her front door to find Jaskaran Kang, who lived in the flat opposite.
Miss Lawler described her neighbour, whom she had known for several years, as 'dazed, didn't speak' and very heavily blood-stained on the lower half of his body.
Minutes later Alex Clarke, who was staying with Mr Kang, appeared on the landing and busied himself caring for his flatmate while she called the emergency services, Birmingham Crown Court heard.
Both she and Mr Clarke did their best to follow first-aid instructions relayed by ambulance control staff but Mr Kang died at the scene from a knife wound which severed a major artery in his thigh.
The court also heard that Miss Lawler's eldest son was a friend of one of the defendants, Reggie Salmon. Asked by his defence barrister Mr Icah Peart, QC, whether she would describe him as 'a perfectly pleasant and polite young man', she replied that she would.
Mr Kang, 24, who ran the convenience store below the flats in Stourbridge Road with his brother, sold cannabis from the shop which was stored in the loft above his apartment. Salmon had made at least two purchases of the drug from him the day before, it is alleged.
At around 2.15am on the night of the attack, masked intruders kicked in his front door and bundled him out while they forced Mr Clarke at knifepoint to fetch the cannabis from the loft. They escaped in a car later found burnt out near The Crooked House pub in Dudley.
On trial are Dontay Ellis, 19, from Central Drive, Lower Gornal; Michael Cunningham, 18, of Coalway Road, Wolverhampton; Joshua Campbell, 18, of King Edmund Street, Dudley; and James Peake, 18, of Southgate Way, Dudley, who all plead not guilty to the murder on January 6 last year.
Also accused are Salmon, 21, of Stourbridge Road, Dudley, and Tyrone Johnson, 21, of Malthouse Drive, Dudley, who deny manslaughter.
Cunningham and Peake have admitted conspiracy to rob but the other four defendants deny the same charge, although Ellis has confessed to being at the scene.
The case continues.
