Banbury People's Park stabbing accused gives evidence in trial

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons but who we have called Z, appeared overcome with emotion as he gave an account from the witness box today (Tuesday).

“I told him ‘back up’ and then I moved my face away from his,” he told his barrister Peter Doyle KC - before taking a long pause.

“Look at me,” Mr Doyle reassured his young client, who gave his evidence from behind a pale tangerine curtain that screened the witness box from the public gallery in courtroom two at Oxford Crown Court.

The barrister added: “What do you next remember happening?”

Z replied: “I believe that I stood up and then like he – as I stood up – he just stood still and then I sat back down and then he pushed me and then I just – he just, he wanted the issue, so obviously I stand back up and I punch him in the face and he does nothing.

“He stays there and he’s still, like, like he seems determined he wants an issue so I give him another punch.”

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The second punch landed on Danils Bogdancevs’ nose, Z told his barrister.

Z said the man then ‘walked away with his friends’. “There was a bit of blood on my hand,” he said. “I just wiped it off on my coat.”

Earlier, the boy told jurors that he went to the People’s Park in Banbury, where Mr Bogdancevs was allegedly attacked and stabbed by a group of young men on June 11 last year, ‘every day’ to meet his friends.

He kept his cannabis, which he had been taking for around two to three years before last summer’s stabbing, in a ‘little bush’ in the park.

The youth said that around a fortnight before the stabbing – euphemistically referred to by Mr Doyle as ‘The Day’ – he had been approached by a different man he did not know and who asked him for cannabis. He refused to share his spliff.

Z said he punched the man then, when he kept pestering him, struck him a second time. He injured his own thumb in throwing the second blow and was later taken to hospital by his mum.

The boy went for a check-up appointment at a different hospital on the day of the attack on June 11, the jury heard.

The court heard that Z had a previous conviction for common assault and possession of a weapon, relating to him going to a man’s house with a metal file after the adult ‘threatened’ the boy’s mum on her doorstep.

He was on bail at the time of the stabbing, having been arrested on suspicion of dealing cannabis. The allegation was denied, Mr Doyle told the jury.

Z denied ever having been in possession of a knife.

Three boys deny attempted murder and wounding with intent. The trial continues.

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