Teenager denies role in killing shopkeeper Jaskaran Kang
A teenager who went masked and armed with a machete to commit a robbery told a murder trial he took no part in the fatal stabbing of a shopkeeper.
James Peake, 19, on trial with three others for robbing and killing 24-year-old Jaskaran Kang at his Dudley flat for drugs, insisted he fled the scene without using the knife.
The gang had kicked in the victim’s front door and left him bleeding to death from a leg wound after forcing Mr Kang’s flatmate to hand over the drugs.
Michael Cunningham, 19, and Joshua Campbell, 18, burst in first, entering a bedroom on the left where they ordered Alex Clark at knifepoint to fetch ‘the food’ from the loft.
More coverage:
Peake told the jury that he was next into the flat, with Dontay Ellis, 18, at the back.
As he stood in the bedroom doorway, he ‘glimpsed someone running past’ him towards the communal landing outside the flat, he said.
There was the sound of ‘scuffling’ and ‘banging’ on the landing ‘but I didn’t clock on to it’, Peake told the jury.
He said he remained in the flat until Mr Clark handed over the cannabis and ran out just ahead of Campbell and Cunningham.
He told the court: “I think I saw Kang with blood on him but I didn’t take a good look.” Asked if he had taken any part in injuring Mr Kang, he replied “Not at all.”
The jury heard the four travelled to the flat on January 5 last year in a stolen Ford Focus driven by Peake.
He claimed they had initially intended to buy cannabis from Mr Kang and had thought he was out when they broke into his flat.
Peake, of Southgate Way, Dudley; Cunningham of Coalway Road, Wolverhampton; Ellis, of Central Drive, Lower Gornal; and Campbell, of King Edmund Street, Dudley, plead not guilty to murder.
Johnson, 21, of Malthouse Drive, Dudley, denies manslaughter.
Cunningham and Peake have admitted conspiracy; the others deny the charge, although Ellis has confessed to being at the scene.
The case continues.
