VICTIM’S ‘KILLER’ ASKED POLICE FOR LIFT HOME AFTER FATAL STABBING
COURT TOLD INTRUDER STABBED STRANGER TO DEATH IN HIS BED
A man called the police to ask for a lift home after stabbing a stranger to death in his bed, murder trial jurors have been told .
Intruder Daniel Johnson stabbed David Wilson, 49, seven times at his home in Southwick Road, Sunderland, in the early hours of December 14, 2014, and caused “massive and immediate” blood loss, the court was told.
Prosecutors say the 20-year-old stranger used his victim’s Samsung E1200 mobile telephone to ring the police after the killing to ask for a lift from Sunderland to Gateshead.
Robert Smith QC told Newcastle Crown Court the call was made from Mr Wilson’s phone at 4.41am that morning.
Mr Smith said: “That telephone call wasn’t made in order to report the incident at Southwick Road or anything connected with it.
“It was, instead, made in an attempt to persuade the police to give the person then using the telephone, the caller, a lift to his home in Gateshead.
“On any view, it was an unusual thing for anyone to do.”
Mr Smith said evidence during the trial will show “that the caller and the person who killed David Wilson were one and the same”.
The court heard during conversation, made from a phone Mr Wilson had recently bought, the caller said “I don’t have a clue how I’m getting home. I live in Gateshead.”
He added: “I’ve been to a house party and I’ve missed the last Metro.”
The court heard Johnson, who was living in Gateshead, had been to a party in Sunderland that night and had formerly lived in the city.
Mr Smith told jurors the deadly attack happened when Mr Wilson’s boyfriend had gone out to get a McDonalds and got mugged by a man, who prosecutors claim was Johnson, when he got back to their front door.
Mr Wilson’s partner eventually was able to run away from the mugger, who took his keys and forced him to a cashpoint, and went back to the flat with the police but, when he was unable to get an answer, believed Mr Wilson was still in a deep sleep inside.
Mr Smith told jurors: “You may want to ask yourselves whether that was because, during the short intervening period between him escaping from the man at the ATM and returning to the flat with the police, the man who stole his keys had entered the flat, in the knowledge gained shortly beforehand of where he lived, and, using the keys to get in, had entered the bedroom where David Wilson was and had stabbed him to silence him then left the property, locking the door behind him.”
The court heard when he got no answer at the door, Mr Wilson’s boyfriend went to hospital and to the police station then picked up some spare keys before returning home.
It was then he found Mr Wilson lying on the bloodsoaked bed.
Mr Smith told the court: “He found him dead in bed, ran from the property and made an emergency call.
“David Wilson’s body was seen in situ by a Home Office pathologist.
“He was on his left side, partially covered by bed clothes and there were blood stains.
“A blood-stained kitchen knife was on the floor by the bed.
“He had seven stab wounds to the head and neck and a number of wounds to the left hand, some superficial cuts.
“The seven stab wounds represent seven separate actions with the knife.
“One deeply penetrating injury, between the ear and neck, cut the main vein and main artery on the right and caused extensive blood loss.
“It is likely David Wilson’s death would have been rapid following infliction of that injury.”
Johnson, of Mulberry Gardens, Gateshead, denies murder. The trial continues.