A father has told a jury he gave Lee McKnight chest compressions as he lay badly injured — and revealed he also burned his teenage son’s clothes after the deadly attack.
Paul Roberts is on trial at Carlisle Crown Court along with 18-year-old Jamie Lee Roberts and four others.
All deny murdering Mr McKnight early on July 24 last year.
From the witness box today, Roberts, 51, said he was initially awoken by calls from the phone of one other suspect, Carol Edgar, which he blocked; and then calls from another, Jamie Davison. Roberts then received a text which simply read: “It’s J.”
His son wasn’t at their Grey Street city home.
“This was way out of the ordinary,” said Roberts. “I was worried because Jamie Lee wasn’t in.”
Roberts called Davison’s phone and his son answered.
“There was an awful lot of words,” Roberts said.
“He was sobbing down the phone. He was saying something really bad had happened, that he was at Carol’s and would I come and get him.”
Roberts said he was asked by his son to take a camping rucksack to a Charles Street address and knocked CCTV off in his building, aware Jamie Lee was subject to a night-time curfew.
At Charles Street he shouted through the letterbox and was let in.
“As soon as I walked in the front room, there was Jamie Davison and there was Jamie Lee in the front room, and Jamie Lee looked to be in a bit of a state. He had that red face, you know where someone has been crying. Red eyes,” he told jurors.
Davison, he said, told him “shut up, because the lad’s in the back kitchen”, and looked “very ‘hopped up’ and twitchy as if he was off his face…just like coked up”.
Roberts let out a deep breath as he recalled looking into the kitchen.
“There was a lad on the floor,” he said. “There was a lot of blood.“
Carol Edgar was cuddling her daughter Coral, also on trial, who was “in a proper state”.
Fearing his son would be implicated in the assault, Roberts told the teen to get out.
Roberts junior changed clothes, putting his old garments in a thin plastic bag before leaving.
Asked by Carol to check on unconscious Mr McKnight, Roberts senior said: “I cleared his airway. I remember telling them they needed to get this lad an ambulance.”
But he added: “I was told an ambulance wasn’t getting phoned.”
“Who told you that?” asked his barrister, Gordon Cole QC.
“Jamie Davison,” replied Roberts who stated, when asked whether it crossed his mind to call an ambulance himself, hinting at safety fears: “No. I was told there wasn’t an ambulance getting called.
2There was a good chance there was going to be me on the floor or my son.”
Roberts left, putting the white bag into a recycling bag and dropping an unknown phone he found with the clothing into a drain on his short walk home.
He returned to Charles Street in search of a lost front door key, going back to Mr McKnight to check for a pulse and saying he found a “weak” one in his inner thigh.
“So then I attempted CPR. I didn’t give him any rescue breaths. I just gave him some chest compressions,” he said.
That seemed to have a positive effect. Davison then indicated he would assist Mr McKnight, said Roberts, who told jurors: “He said he would take him to hospital and drop him off outside the emergency department.
Roberts said he watched Davison and the sixth person on trial, Arron Graham, carry Mr McKnight through the house towards a Nissan Navara.
“They must have got him all the way outside. I remember seeing Jamie Davison in the back seat with Lee,” said Roberts.
He heard it drive away and found his key as he returned on foot to Grey Street, where his son was in the shower.
Roberts said he added trousers and trainers to the bag of clothing, and burned it underneath a bridge at Botcherby Park after an initially unsuccessful attempt.
The trial continues.
