Friends recount final days before teenager’s death
JOE HEARD TELLING ALLEGED KILLER HE WAS ‘LONELY’
A 16-YEAR-OLD boy was heard speaking to his alleged killer the night before his death, saying: “I’m steaming. Can I come over?”
Joe Whitchurch had been heard by a pal – who he had been drinking with on Christmas night – calling Jake Rollinson, adding: “I’m lonely and I need some company.”
The friend, of Sandiacre, had recalled how Joe rang Rollinson, who he knew as Rollo, and allegedly overheard what was said.
They then went to Rollinson’s nanna’s house. But Joe’s friend did not go in as “I don’t like Rollo and we don’t have anything to do with him,” he said in a statement read out at Rollinson’s Nottingham Crown Court trial.
He also said he had seen Rollinson earlier when he drew up in a black car and stopped to speak to Joe.
Joe had spoken to him through the car window – but the witness could not hear what was being said – before Rollinson drove off.
The statement read: “I knew Joe was close to Rollo, as it was Rollo who got Joe to sell drugs on the street, and he also got Joe into taking cocaine, which he had been taking for years.”
The jury also heard a statement from another another friend of Joe’s.
This friend had a conversation on Facebook Messenger with him at about 3.30am on Boxing Day.
He had asked Joe if he had any cocaine he could buy. Joe told him he only had cannabis not cocaine.
The witness had no idea Joe was hanging around with Rollinson.
The statement continued to say he had known Jake Rollinson since he was seven but “I never became friends with him.
“We never really liked each other. “Lots of people would talk about Jake in a negative way,” said the statement, read out by James Hines QC, prosecuting.
“I saw a picture of him (Rollinson) in possession of a knife on Facebook. I saw this picture very close to the time Joe was stabbed. The knife looked like a Rambo knife, a hunting knife.”
The jury looked at a photo from a Facebook profile, in a different name made up by Rollinson. The picture depicted the defendant with a knife in his right hand and wearing a Canada Goose jacket. Rollinson, 20, of Hicklngs Lane, Stapleford denies murder but has pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice after providing false accounts to a 999 call operator and police after the killing.
In the early hours of Boxing Day, Joe was stabbed at least four times, allegedly by Rollinson, in the kitchen of Rollinson’s home in Hickings Lane, Stapleford.
Joe was barely conscious and he was haemorrhaging blood at a terrifying rate, the jury heard. His blood was described as spurting from his leg. He had a stab wound to the chest which was to prove fatal. The chest wound had pierced Joseph’s heart and had caused it to stop, resulting in his brain being deprived of oxygen.
The trial continues