Daniel Wallace murder: Drug dealer cleared over brutal killing at flat
A drug addict and dealer has been found not guilty of the brutal murder of Daniel Indiga Wallace at his flat last November.
Sam Arnold yelled: "Thank you, I told you, man," to the jury at Birmingham Crown Court after they returned to find him innocent of murder and an alternative charge of manslaughter. They deliberated for an hour and a half following a trial that lasted almost three weeks.
No murder weapon was found after Mr Wallace was found dead by his father in a pool of his own blood at the Fisher Street flat in Tipton on November 11 last year. He had suffered 19 impact blows with a bladed weapon, believed to be a meat cleaver. And the only DNA of Arnold being at the flat was fingerprints on the back door. Given that the 21-year-old, of Slater Street, Tipton, was regularly seen at Mr Wallace's flat, this evidence was deemed insufficient to convict him.
It was the prosecution's case, put before the court by David Mason QC, that Arnold was under pressure from Mr Wallace and other drug dealers who he owed money to, and that he took the law into his own hands, ending Mr Wallace's life in a ferocious attack, leaving behind a bloodbath. Blood of the victim was even found on the ceiling.
But Arnold's barrister Jo Sidhu QC insisted that the defendant and Mr Wallace were friends through the drug scene, and that Arnold had been with his girlfriend, Penny Harper, babysitting for her sister's children, on the night of November 7, when Mr Wallace is believed to have died.
Over the course of the trial, the court heard from the victim's father Balbinder Dhariwal, who told of his horror at finding his son face down on his living room floor on what would have been his 25th birthday. Sarah-Jane Nock, the sister of Arnold's girlfriend, gave evidence that he confessed to the killing. But her testimony was called into question as it emerged she was drunk on the night she claims it happened.
Arnold told how Mr Wallace was a 'nice guy' and that they had a good friendship, often smoking cannabis spliffs together.
Judge Martin Wall released Arnold and he was led away from the dock after the verdict.
