MURDER TRIAL: 'Stabbed man begged me for help' (From The Oxford Times)

MURDER TRIAL: 'Stabbed man begged me for help'

6:40am Friday 4th December 2009

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A MAN begged for help while staggering through an Oxford graveyard after being stabbed in the neck, a jury heard yesterday.

Devon McPherson, 42, died after he was stabbed at SS Mary and John Churchyard, in Cowley Road, before collapsing outside The Regal nightclub, in Magdalen Road, on May 18.

Robert Lee Chin, 49, of no fixed address, denies murder and is on on trial at Oxford Crown Court.

Witness Stephanie Brandish yesterday told the trial she was in the graveyard with her boyfriend and heard three men arguing.

She peered around a wall and described seeing an aggressive man raising his arm and striking a second man, who then staggered backwards.

Ms Brandish told the court she ran to tell her boyfriend, who was a few yards away, what she had seen.

But, when she returned, she saw the man who had been struck staggering along the path through the graveyard.

She said: “He started walking towards me.

“He had both his hands round his neck area.

“He had an expression of fear and seemed as scared as I was.

“He said ‘help me’.

“He was struggling to talk. I got freaked out and backed away.

“I went back to my boyfriend and we went out to the Cowley Road.”

Ms Brandish told the jury she got drunk with friends and told them what she saw, but they warned her against going to police.

A few days later she spotted a front page in the Oxford Mail with a photograph of a man police wanted to speak to in connection with the killing.

Ms Brandish said: “There was a picture on the front page of the newspaper stating they were looking for somebody.

“It was in the same area I was in on that day and it seemed to be in relation to what I had seen.

“I saw the picture and thought he was familiar. He was the person who was being aggressive that day.”

Ms Brandish said she was too scared to call police, but eventually gave a statement on July 8.

The trial had previously heard Mr McPherson and Chin were both drug dealers who had an argument a week before the murder about a bicycle.

During the confrontation Chin is alleged to have claimed he killed for fun and Mr McPherson, of Divinity Road, Oxford, replied it ‘was war’.

Mr McPherson’s girlfriend, Ann-ette Stanmore, earlier told the court Chin also boasted about killing two men over drugs in New York.

The trial continues.

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