A friend of 16-year-old Joshua Ingram told police how he saw his friend fatally stabbed in front of him at Seaford Railway Station last September – with no hesitation.
The friend said: “He just lunged at him. No words. No hesitation. He just did it.”
The 16-year-old friend, whose identity is protected by court order, was speaking in a video interview with police which was played to jurors at Hove Crown Court this afternoon (Wednesday 8 July).
He said that he and Josh had travelled from college in Eastbourne to Seaford on the 12X bus on their way home. Josh lived in Newhaven.
The pair got off the bus by the Seaford Library and were walking to the station to get a train.
He said that Josh spotted his killer and said that he owed him £20 and asked whether his friend had seen him – but he hadn’t.
The friend said that, at the station, Josh was a few steps ahead of him. He said: “I had a tap on my left shoulder. I turned around. He said: ‘Is that Josh?’
“Before I could even answer, he got in front of me then pulled out a knife from his right hip. I screamed, Josh!”
“Josh turned around and he just lunged at him. No words. No hesitation. He just did it. He just lunged at Josh.
“He could have just stabbed some man. He didn’t check who it was.
“I was just frozen. I don’t think Josh even knew what was happening.
“Josh went a couple of steps and then just dropped to the floor.
“I genuinely thought he (the killer) was going to stab me … to not leave any witnesses.
“I didn’t see the blade. I just saw the handle. It was like an army knife.”
At another point in the interview, he described the weapon as like a hunting knife.
A man at the station thought that the killer had punched Josh, the friend said, because the man had not seen the knife.
Josh’s friend called 999 and desperately juggled speaking to the emergency services while urging his friend to try to stem the bleeding.
The last thing Josh said was to ask his friend to call his girlfriend for him – and once paramedics had arrived, he said that he did.
The boy told officers from the British Transport Police (BTP) that they had all been in the same group of friends at school. He had fallen out with the others in the group before the stabbing.
The youth also said that the money was owed for “weed” and he said of the killer: “The fact that he did that over £20 is like … yeah.”
He tailed off, unable to find the words.
The trial continues.
