A CONVICTED killer has admitted his involvement in a brawl committed four months before the fatal stabbing that claimed the life of Lee Butler.

Lewis Brown, 20, was jailed for 10-and-a-half years at the start of May after a jury found him guilty of Mr Butler’s manslaughter and possession of the knife used to stab him in the chest.

Appearing before Oxford Crown Court this morning via video link from HMP Bullingdon, Brown pleaded guilty to affray and possession of a knife outside the shops in Underhill Circus, Barton, on June 2 last year.

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Prosecutor Robert Harding said that, as a result of those anticipated pleas, the Crown Prosecution Service had taken a fresh look at two other allegations he faced – of dealing crack cocaine and heroin in Littlemore in March and April 2020 – and would be offering no evidence.

The co-defendant in that case, Reece Chapman, 19, who featured in Brown’s murder trial as the man prosecutors claimed was running the ‘Bob’ drugs line in the Barton area at the time of Mr Butler’s death.

The Littlemore charges followed the discovery by police of a container filled with drugs in the communal garden of a block of flats where Brown and another man were arrested.

Judge Ian Pringle QC formally recorded not guilty verdicts on the two drugs charges and remanded Brown in custody to be sentenced for the affray case on May 27.

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The facts of the affray featured in Brown’s four-week murder trial at Oxford Crown Court last month.

Jurors were shown CCTV of the defendant putting a large knife into a rucksack outside the SPAR shop in Underhill Circus.

From the witness stand, Brown claimed that he did not habitually carry a knife, despite evidence from one of his customers and alleged runner Colin Sumner that he did.

The red-haired killer also said that on the day of Mr Butler’s death he had been made to carry a knife by mystery man ‘Jake’, who he claimed was running the ‘Bob’ drugs line and was forcing him to deal drugs on the streets of Barton.

Jurors rejected his defence that he was being made to carry the knife as a ‘modern-day slave’.

Sentencing him for manslaughter, Judge Ian Pringle QC said he was of the view Brown ‘habitually’ carried a knife down his trousers, as he had done on the day of the fatal stabbing on October 8 last year.

“I find as a fact that your story about the character ‘Jake’ was a deliberate invention by you in an attempt to justify your carrying a knife that day, something I find you did regularly,” he added.

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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.  

To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward