Drug addicts killed OAP for bank card
Pair are found guilty of a ‘sustained, violent attack’ on kindly widower
TWO drug addicts were yesterday found guilty of the violent death of a kindly pensioner
Aaron Brown, 39, and 29year- old Hannah Day l eft John Cornish with 42 injuries including a fractured larynx and knife wounds.
He collapsed with a heart attack but the callous pair then went upstairs to have sex.
Police believe he was threatened and assaulted to get him to hand over his bank card.
In court, Day – who had stolen from and taken advantage of the pensioner for years – and Brown blamed each other for the ‘sustained, violent attack’.
She claimed he had grabbed Mr Cornish, 75, and punched him in the head while demanding money before he collapsed from a heart attack.
Brown alleged it was Day who was arguing with Mr Cornish and claimed she slapped him around the f ace before he turned purple and fell.
Prosecutors said Day and Brown had ‘lied, lied and lied again’ about what took place in Mr Cornish’s bed and breakfast in Weymouth, Dorset.
Matthew Jewell, QC, said the killing was ‘far more violent’ than either Brown or Day were prepared to admit.
They had each denied charges of manslaughter a nd of attempted robbery but after deliberating for six and a half hours a jury yesterday found them both guilty. They will be sentenced today.
Winchester Crown Court heard Day had ‘taken advantage’ of the ‘quiet, caring and non-judgmental’ widower. The court heard he lost his wife in 2002 and became lonely after another long-term relationship ended in 2012.
Day, who began using drugs aged 13, told the court she first met Mr Cornish in 2015 when she was trying to find a room at a bed and breakfast for a friend. She claimed in the years that followed she would provide him with the company he sought, doing his laundry and cooking him meals.
‘He would drive me to go and buy my drugs,’ Day would claim. ‘He just thought it was a waste of my life. He was very kind about everything.’
Mr Cornish reported Day to police in 2016 for ‘using his bank card to steal £21,000’ but he later did not press charges. CCTV seen in court showed her leading him to cashpoints to withdraw money, while she apparently l ooked over his shoulder. Day, of no f i xed address, told the court she had taken £32,000 ‘with his permission’ and claimed the pensioner gave her between £50 to £200 a day for drugs.
But halfway through the trial, Day admitted stealing Mr Cornish’s bank card and using it without his permission.
In the weeks before his death, Mr Cornish’s daughter, Beverley, said she saw a change in her father’s demeanour and became extremely concerned. She told the court her father felt like ‘a prisoner in his own home’.
On the day of the killing, Brown and Day had been taking heroin and drinking on the seafront of the Dorset town.
They went back to the bed and breakfast, where Day stayed most nights, to get £20 from the pensioner, although they claimed in court they were just going there to have sex.
Moments after they arrived on September 6, Mr Cornish was attacked and his bruised and bloody body was left lying on the floor of the kitchen.
Brown, f r om Weymouth, called an ambulance three hours after the attack but gave them an incorrect address.
Day again raised the alarm and Mr Cornish’s body was found the next morning.
Officers investigating later overheard Day say about Brown ‘he was proper nasty when he was on the gear’.
Brown claimed he was an innocent bystander and said that Day was a ‘little ball of nastiness’ who had a ‘strange, dominating relationship’ with Mr Cornish.
‘A little ball of nastiness’