TEENAGER TELLS TRIAL JURY OF ENCOUNTER WITH MAN BEFORE POLICE OFFICER WAS STABBED
Boy told trial jury he felt ‘nervous’ after being approached by man in city park
A TEENAGE boy has told a jury he felt ‘nervous’ after being approached by a man minutes before a police officer was stabbed.
The 15-year-old boy was giving evidence at Portsmouth Crown Court at the trial of Michael Enzanga, 20, who is accused of stabbing PC Russell Turner in Stamshaw Park on February 21 at 12.15pm.
Plainclothes officer PC Turner, 56, suffered a collapsed lung in the stabbing.
Jurors have already been told a black man was assaulted the day before at the park, and a Stamshaw Adventure Playground play worker said she saw the same man with a ‘makeshift’ bandage on his head on the day of the stabbing.
Speaking on a video recorded by police, the boy said that on February 21 a black man aged 19 or 20 with a plaster on his head asked him about two men from the day before at around 11.30am.
The boy said: ‘He said that “is there still any drugs over there?” I said “nah the police took it all”.’
The youngster added the man asked him for his number but the boy gave a fake name and an old disconnected mobile number.
When the boy joined friends at the park on swings he was beckoned over by the same man, jurors were told.
The boy said: ‘He walked round the corner and called me over by the fake name I had given and he said “come over here”.
‘So I’d come over to him and he said “what’s happening” I said “not much” but the two people he described to me, I told him I’d seen down Jervis Road.
‘He said “you’re my...”. He told me his name was Kev and said if I needed anything I should ask him for it and when he was going to come back he would sort me with some money.
‘When he walked off and turned back he pulled out a big bundle of money and said he wasn’t joking.’
The boy, who did not see the stabbing take place, said he later joined others watching the aftermath and saw the same man garden-hopping in Strode Road before hitting a dead end at a wall.
The man climbed the wall as a woman on a bike filmed him, the boy said.
Enzanga, who was 19 at the time and is from Ashfield Road in Tottenham, London, denies grievous bodily harm with intent, possessing a knife, having criminal property of almost £1,000, and four charges of possessing class A drugs with intent to supply.
The drug charges relate to recovered heroin and crack cocaine wraps found on the day of the incident and the day before, both in the park, and both with Enzanga’s DNA on them, prosecutor Dale Sullivan said. The cash was seized on February 21 after the stabbing.
(Proceeding)