The stab wounds found on the body of Abdul Deghayes show that he was murdered – not killed in self-defence, prosecutor Adam Feest told a crown court jury yesterday (Wednesday 9 September).
Mr Feest said that drug dealer Daniel Macleod stabbed 22-year-old Deghayes eight times in a fight outside the Hanover Court flats, in Wellington Road, Brighton, in February last year.
Macleod would plead self-defence, Mr Feest said.
But the evidence showed that Deghayes had been stabbed in the back. The wound – 9in to 10in deep – was close to his kidney and caused heavy blood loss.
The prosecutor said: “If you’re defending yourself, why would you need to stab someone in the back?”
Deghayes, of Chadborn Close, Brighton, had wounds where the single-blade knife had gone right through his hand as he desperately tried to fend off the fatal attack.
Mr Feest told Southwark Crown Court that another “defensive” wound inflicted on the wrist had cut his tendon as Deghayes tried to ward off Macleod.
Deghayes suffered a 6in stab wound to his left thigh and another – slightly less deep – which cut his thigh bone and severed his femoral artery, causing catastrophic bleeding.
Mr Feest told the jury: “Abdul Deghayes sustained serious and significant injuries from which he never recovered and due to their nature was never likely to recover.”
The jury was told that Macleod stabbed Deghayes twice in the buttocks too.
Mr Feest said: “The targeting of the buttock and groin area, which can maim and humiliate a victim, but not kill them, is known as ‘Turkish revenge’ or ‘bagging’.”
“Bagging,” he said, was possibly a reference to such wounds leaving victims needing to use a catheter or colostomy bag and was “often used for revenge or humiliation within the knife-wielding drug-dealing community”.
Macleod, in contrast, was unhurt despite saying that he had acted in self-defence in the face of a ferocious and frenzied attack by Deghayes.
Mr Feest said: “His only injury was a small bruise on his left thigh.”
He also told the jury that Macleod admitted being at the scene to sell cocaine to Deghayes.
Drugs with a street value of more than £100,000 were found at a flat in Bristol Gate which Macleod used as his business address.
Evidence from mobile phones, phone masts, DNA and automatic number plate recognition cameras showed that Macleod and his co-defendant Stephen Burns had tried to cover up the murder and conceal the evidence.
Burns, 56, of Lennox Street, Brighton, denies helping an offender.
Macleod, 37, of Gipsy Road, south London, denies murder.
Both defendants have pleaded guilty to drug dealing, along with a third man, Abdi Dahir, 24, of Meadowview, Brighton.
The trial continues.
