Decoding urban slang key to nailing murderers
Killers’ language translated for jury in footballer stabbing case
THE killers of footballer Cody Fisher spoke to each other in such heavy Jamaican slang that lawyers had to refer to ‘urban dictionaries’ during their trial.
Social media messages, particularly on Snapchat, provided a wealth of evidence against those responsible for the 23-year-old’s death at Crane nightclub in Digbeth on Boxing Day in 2022.
Following a trial Remy Gordon, aged 23 from Rednal, and Kami Carpenter, 22, from Kings Norton, were found guilty of murder while Gordon was also convicted of affray.
Reegan Anderson, 19, was cleared of murder and manslaughter but found guilty of affray.
Mr Fisher, a semi-professional footballer, was stabbed to death out of petty retaliation for a minor altercation with Gordon at Popworld, Solihull, two nights earlier.
The jury was presented with more than 90 pages of text and audio message transcripts which captured the defendants’ chilling conversations in the 48-hour period between the two incidents, and the hours that followed the fatal attack as they reacted to the killing.
But it was not easy reading material due to the nature of language used between them.
Giving evidence from the stand Gordon described it is as ‘generally Jamaican slang but people call it roadman’.
Interpreting the message exchanges was made more difficult by the fact many of them contained many street terms and abbreviations.
The defendants often referred to themselves in the third person by using the term ‘man’.
While many sentences were littered with the word ‘still’ at the end, which is apparently a way of validating whatever point they were trying to make, the court heard.
“I need to go to the pub still,” said Gordon in one early message on December 24, 2022.
Another phrase was ‘rah’ or variations spelt differently, which is supposedly a way of expressing something ‘excitable’.
Carpenter sent a voice note to Gordon prior to going to Crane which said: “I’m rah in the mood to skank, like could skank, I rah could bust up man’s skank right now.”
Incidentally, the jury was told ‘skank’ referred to ‘dancing’.
It was one of several slang phrases that had to be presented to them as ‘agreed facts’.
Significantly, they were told ‘shank’ used as a noun meant knife while used as a verb it meant attacking someone with a knife.
Prosecutors also explained that ‘yoot’ or ‘yute’ meant ‘youth’ and ‘whip’ referred to gas canisters used by people to inhale nitrous oxide.
Following the initial confrontation at Popworld, Solihull, Gordon ripped into Mr Fisher to his own friends and co-accused on their Snapchat group.
In a series of text and audio messages he said: “My man thinks he’s bad. Posh yute. Heard the way he’s talking but oh my gosh.”
He continued: “I wish I’d shanked up that geezer earlier. Man you should of heard the way he was talking bruv f ****** . Rah I’ve seen him in better times than that you know, bopping around with his chain and that. Thinkins bad .... bruv.”
Gordon’s ramble went on throughout the morning: “If man see that
white yoot tomorrow. Beg someone knock him out and take his chain bruv.”
And during a moment in the proceedings, while the jury was not in court, barristers debated the meaning of ‘donny’ as they sought definitions from their own online ‘urban dictionaries’.
Prosecutor Michael Duck KC suggested that it was a derogatory term for someone while Charles Sherrard KC, for Carpenter, countered that it was more of a compliment meaning a ‘dominant alpha male and top sh **** r’. A similar debate occurred around the word ‘long’, which Mr Duck identified as: “It means tiresome, can’t be bothered.”
Mr Fisher, had played for Birmingham City’s academy, Stourbidge FC, Bromsgrove Sporting and most recently Stratford Town.
Sentencing will take place later date.
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