A 21-year-old Albanian man was killed in an attack in Brighton that was “brutal, sustained and determined”, a jury was told today (Tuesday 10 March).
Serxhio Marku, of Buckingham Place, Brighton, was attacked in a flat in Stafford Road, Brighton, in the early hours of Wednesday 11 September last year.
At one point, Alan Kent, prosecuting, said that Mr Marku desperately tried to escape and his bloodied handprint was found by police on the front door frame.
Mr Marku was dragged back inside and stabbed and repeatedly hit with a metal weightlifting bar, leaving him unconscious on the kitchen floor.
Despite extensive efforts by police and medics to save Mr Marku’s life, he was pronounced dead at the Royal Sussex County Hospital two hours later.
Alan Kent, prosecuting, said that Mr Marku, a drug dealer, was murdered jointly by two Italian kitchen workers – Francesco D’Agostino and Giuseppe Petriccione – at their D’Agostino’s council flat in Stafford Road.
At Lewes Crown Court Mr Kent said that both men had blamed each other for the brutal attack but both were responsible.
Hours before the fatal assault D’Agostino had sent a text to an unnamed contact in Italian. Mr Kent said: “The translation is this: ‘Tonight I will commit a murder.’”
Earlier the pair had bought cocaine from Mr Marku but, Mr Kent said, the motive for the murder remained a mystery.
D’Agostino, 44, and Petriccione, 45, both of Stafford Road, Brighton, deny murder. The trial continues.
