Teenager accused of boy’s murder in Oldbury ‘used friend’s phone to look for Paris trains’

Wolverhampton Crown Court was told that the boy accused of murdering Jahziah, along with a second male who was also charged with murder but had the case against him dropped before the trial started, fled the scene and caught a bus to a female friend’s house.

Neither the boys nor the friend can be named due to their ages.

In video evidence played to the court, the girl told police the boys were “stressed and sweaty” when they arrived at her flat at around 6.30pm on the evening of the alleged murder.

She said the defendant asked to use her phone, and saw he was looking on Google at train tickets to both Erdington and Paris.

The girl also told officers she jokingly asked if he was “going to kill someone” after he asked her for some bleach, which she gave him a small amount of in a plastic bottle, and said he “laughed nervously” in response.

Asked by police what the defendant’s demeanour was like when the pair arrived at her flat, she said: “He’s usually smiling and excited but he was serious and so sweaty. I could smell their sweat. You could tell there was something wrong.”

She said she further felt there was something wrong when the defendant asked her for fresh clothes because he had wet himself, and that he only took a “nibble” of a doughnut he had been offered by her mother, when he would usually eat quickly.

While the boys played on the PlayStation in her room during the time they were there, she said they were “silent” and did not seem to be enjoying it.

After hearing from a friend on Snapchat that Jahziah had died and there were rumours that the defendant was responsible, she said the two boys were “confused” and did not believe he had died.

She hugged him

When she asked the defendant if it was true, she said he became emotional and she hugged him.

She said: “It made me upset. I was comforting them both. [The defendant] said he wanted to die, I said no.

“He kept saying it shouldn’t have happened. He said he was sorry to everybody he knows. He was crying in my arms and I was telling him it would be okay.

“He just kept saying it shouldn’t have happened, you could tell he was stressed, he was shaking his head.”

At around 10pm, the girl’s mother said the boys needed to leave, but when the girl informed her of the accusations the defendant was facing, she told the girl to go out and get them to come back.

The girl ran to a nearby bus stop where she found them crying, and described how they became scared when they heard police sirens and ran back to her flat, where he explained what had happened to the girl’s mother.

The girl also said the boy told them that he and Jahziah had struggled, he had tried to twist the knife away from him and that Jahziah had been stabbed in the process.

She said Jahziah had allegedly dropped to the floor but got back up, and she could not recall what the boy had told her about how the second stab wound occurred.

The girl’s mother told the defendant he needed to tell the police what had happened, that it was “self-defence” and gave him £20 for a taxi to the police station, although she later found out he did not go.

The friend also described to police a previous incident around two months before the fatal attack in which she was on FaceTime with the defendant when he and Jahziah had an argument and the victim threatened to get his “shank”.

Details of the address where Jahziah was found cannot be published because of a court order.

A man aged in his 40s, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is also on trial charged with assisting the youth accused of murder to evade police until their arrest three days after the death.

The trial continues.