Bullingdon Prison is no place for a teenager barely a year out of childhood.
From the road to Bicester, it could be a factory linked to an anonymous multinational, with a guardhouse and high fences protecting it from the outside world; and protecting the outside world from the men inside its walls.
It was from prison that Bradley Morton revealed glimpses of what he knew about the stabbing of Alex Innes, a 25-year-old Kidlington electrician.
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A talented footballer in his youth, Bradley Morton was 18 years old when he went to Love Jericho on the night of November 12 last year intent on having a good time.
He was there with two young women and a contemporary, Keyarno Johnson-Allen, known by his nickname ‘KiKi’.
So how was it that, less than six months later, he was behind bars telling a friend on the other end of a telephone line that the person who plunged a knife into the chest of Mr Innes in the early hours of November 13 had never meant to do it?
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Jurors in the trial of Morton and three others accused of Mr Innes’ murder never got to hear the recordings that the police made of the teenager’s prison calls.
The trial judge, Recorder of Oxford Ian Pringle KC, ruled that they would have been so prejudicial against Greg ‘Gino’ Muinami, the man prosecutors accused of striking the fatal blow, that they could not go in front of the jury.
In the calls, Morton appeared to suggest that one of his co-defendants – who the Crown’s junior barrister Ben Temple told the judge was ‘Gino’ – knew more about the stabbing than he was letting on.
Adopting the street slang popularised by drill rappers on both sides of the Atlantic, the teenager said of Mr Innes: “It’s not even like it’s an opp [opposition] or something.”
He described the stab victim as ‘just a random guy’, that it was ‘over shoes’ and said ‘he didn’t even mean to do it’, Mr Temple told the judge.
Reading from a transcript prepared by the prosecution, Mr Temple said Morton told the caller: “He could have slapped him and mandem probably would have walked away.”
The calls revealed an apparent tension between stabber Muinami and his co-defendants, particularly after suggestions that he could – and should – plead guilty to manslaughter, an alternative charge to murder.
He appeared to suggest that someone known to them had got almost two decades imprisonment. “Man got 18 and he [the prosecution said ‘he’ was Muinami] said ‘that’s light, that’s light’. We’re saying if that’s light why the f*** did you not go guilty to manslaughter?”
“I said you are not letting everyone go down for it,” Mr Temple said Morton told an associate in another call.
“He was like ‘no, I would not do that but we can all beat it together’.”
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Playing out an imaginary scenario in his head of the verdicts being read out, Morton was said to have imitated the jury foreman. “‘We find Bradley Morton guilty of murder.’ [I said] I will beat you up in front of the judge, fam, ‘cause from there what do I have to lose?”
When the verdicts were read out in court in June, Muinami was not in the dock; preferring not to leave the relative safety of his prison cell.
Only his three co-defendants, Michael Oluyitan, Bradley Morton and Keyarno Johnson-Allen, were there to hear the jury clear them of murder, manslaughter and possession of a bladed article.
Only the absent Muinami, who had a previous conviction for robbing a young man in Starbucks, went down.
His sentencing was adjourned in July, with lawyers acting for the Jericho man asking the judge for more time to prepare medical reports.
The teenager returned to St Aldates on Friday (September 8), to be told he won’t be released until he is in his 40s.
Sentencing him to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 24 years and 71 days behind bars, Judge Pringle said: “The background to what took place on that fateful night is that at some time, perhaps a few weeks before that night, Alex Innes, sold to you a pair of trainers.
“There arose a dispute as to whether you had paid the full price for some trainers or whether you still owed him £100.
“It is truly staggering to think that a young man lost his life because of a dispute over such a sum of money.”
Seated in the dock in grey Nike tracksuit trousers and a white t-shirt, the defendant seemed non-plussed. There was a smile playing on his lips as his sentence was pronounced by the judge.
Killed for £100
Alex Innes and Greg Muinami knew each other. A friend of the older man said they had even lived under the same roof for a short time.
By November 12, however, relations seemed to have soured.
Jurors were told of a dispute over a £100 debt owed by Muinami for a pair of £250 trainers. He had paid £150, it was said, but owed the remaining ‘bill’.
There was a disagreement of at the Clouds Shisha Lounge in Cowley Road on November 6, a week before his murder, when Alex saw Muinami.
Remel Yearwood, Alex’s friend, was accused of ‘stirring’ the dispute between them – although the softly spoken giant denied it.
He had received a call from Mr Innes on November 6, the night of the shisha bar incident. His friend accused him of telling Muinami that Alex had ‘taken his Rolex off ready for a fight’ with the teenager.
Asked whether the £100 was a ‘big deal’ to Alex, Mr Yearwood told jurors in May: “Alex was coming to me most days saying about the £100 because obviously he’s tried to message but Gino’s [Muinami’s nickname] not replying back to him. I think he came to me to get through to him.”
Some of those messages were handed to the jury trying the murder case. An exchange over Snapchat on November 1 saw Mr Innes tell Muinami: “You owe me a bill, bro. You just fell off the map.”
He added in what prosecutors suggested was a reference to the shoes: “I niced you with them and you just ghosted man like a d***head.”
Muinami shot back at Mr Innes: “You love talking smoke on man’s name think I won’t hear it.”
The latter pressed again for an update on the whereabouts of his money, asking: “What’s good with my P [slang for money]?”
“Wanna bite?” Muinami replied, sending a short video of himself apparently taking a bite out of a stack of cash notes-like paper.
Mr Innes told the younger man to ‘floss with someone else’s money’, earning the reply: “Okay den stay hungry.”
In his closing speech to the jury, prosecutor Jonathan Higgs KC would later say: “What that shows, actually, is there is a proper argument between those two. Now, it’s over a bill, it’s over a hundred pounds. Goodness me, it ends up with someone’s death. Well, it escalates, doesn’t it.”
Mr Higgs added: “Let me point to what else might this argument be about.
“Absolutely nothing. There is no alternative before you at all as to why Greg Muinami was so obviously arguing with Alex Innes on that balcony – and Alex Innes arguing with Gren Muinami, let’s be balanced.
“That’s why this matters. You’re not judging the rights and wrongs of who owed a hundred pounds. It doesn’t matter who’s in the right, who’s in the wrong. These two have fallen out.”
‘Alex struck lucky’
The night of November 12 was supposed to be a happy one. Earlier, Mr Innes had seen friend Millie O’Loughlin for a coffee at a Costa in Headington. He was his ‘normal self’, she said. Had he known there was an issue with Muinami or ‘any of these boys’ he would never have gone out that night, she told the police.
He met friend Hassan Hussain on the Cowley Road at around 9pm, intending to get some food at Pepe’s chicken shop.
He popped into Ladbrokes in between trying restaurants. Alex ‘struck lucky’, Mr Hussain said, winning around £300 on the slot machines.
They drove up the hill and hung out in Headington, when Mr Innes mentioned his plan to go out for drinks later in the evening.
By then, he already had formed a plan with another friend, Remel Yearwood. Their idea was to go for a drink in La Casa, a bar in Park End Street, although they decided to first visit the Love Jericho cocktail bar as there might have been some ‘ladies’ there. “I’m single, so yeah,” Mr Yearwood told jurors.
Mr Yearwood arrived at the bar by around 11.30pm. Muinami was already there.
Alex sent a text, asking ‘who’s there?’ “I replied ‘bare girls,’” he said. Mr Innes asked ‘if there was any mandem’. Mr Yearwood said: “I replied there was Gino and that.”
Six minutes to midnight, Mr Innes could be seen pausing on Walton Street before heading to the bar. The occupants of a grey Vauxhall Corsa had stopped to speak to him. Behind the driver’s seat was Shohaib Ahmed, a friend of Mr Innes’.
Mr Ahmed asked what his friend was doing there. “I’m going to see a ting,” he replied, meaning he was there to see a girl.
“He said do I look good? He always looks good, so I said yeah, you look fly. He seemed happy. He was always happy, to be honest,” the friend told jurors.
They exchanged pleasantries, said they would see each other later, and went their separate ways. It was the last time Mr Ahmed saw his friend alive.
The crowded terrace
Alex Innes arrived at Love Jericho cocktail bar at around 11.55pm. Wearing a hooded top marked with a large ‘X’ logo on the back and distressed, designer-style jeans, he greeted a succession of men on the balcony; Mr Yearwood among them.
Mr Innes heads inside at 11.58pm and orders a drink at the bar.
Notable by his absence was ‘Gino’ Muinami. Having been there since earlier in the evening, he left the cocktail bar at 11.49pm, walking north past the Oxford University Press building and in the direction of his home in Cranham Street. CCTV showed Mr Innes and Muinami’s paths crossing at around 11.53pm; Alex driving south in his courtesy car, Muinami walking north.
His return journey to the cocktail bar was tracked on CCTV: around 12.23am as he walked down Walton Street and 12.27am as he reached the bar.
Some quarter of an hour earlier, co-defendants Bradley Morton, Keyarno Johnson-Allen and Michael Oluyitan arrive at the bar. While all three would later be accused of Mr Innes’ murder, all three were acquitted of the crime.
What happened next was captured on a series of CCTV cameras, with the footage played over-and-over during the trial.
Muinami and Mr Innes appeared to have a heated discussion on the terrace outside the club, the former’s hand hovering towards the pocket where prosecutors suggested he had stashed a knife. A third man, Dontay Hart, seemed to be acting as the peacemaker, placing his arm between the pair.
Remel Yearwood told jurors that Muinami had ‘put his arm around Alex’ as he arrived at the bar, saying ‘wagwan, big man’
According to Mr Yearwood, who was aware Muinami owed his friend £100 as the balance for a £250 pair of trainers, the teenager was said to have told Alex ‘I owe you money’. Mr Innes replied: “You know you do.”
“Then Gino said ‘what’s this thing about the Albos [he later clarifies this is a reference to Albanians]’ and Alex said ‘what? I didn’t say that’. I was saying look, just leave it, it’s petty, we’re all friends, just leave it,” Mr Yearwood said.
“Gino said ‘let’s go round the corner’ and I [said] ‘just leave it, forget it, it’s stupid, we’re friends here’.
“When Gino said that, Alex said ‘cool, we’re going to sort it out because we’re all friends. Let’s go round there to have a chat. Let’s go round there to have a talk and have a spliff’. But obviously it didn’t get to that.”
The younger man allegedly ‘flicked’ his head, as if beckoning Mr Innes to follow him. He walked away, followed by Oluyitan, past the bar’s terrace and towards Walton Crescent – pulling up his hood as he turned the corner. An eyewitness who saw him in Walton Crescent shortly before the murder described Muinami looking like a ‘zombie’ as he approached her.
Mr Innes joined him, following his friend Mr Yearwood and Mr Hart. He left his glass on a banister as he left the bar.
Morton and Johnson-Allen, who had been killing time on the terrace, dropped down to the street and joined large group at the corner.
Quizzing Remel Yearwood in May, prosecutor Jonathan Higgs KC asked how the interaction between the group ‘carried on’ at the corner.
He said: “Gino asked me ‘has he said it?’ I replied: ‘No.’”
It was in the next few moments, the prosecution said, that Alex Innes was dealt the stab wound that cost him his life.
And those were the moments not covered by CCTV.
Mr Yearwood claimed to have been looking in the opposite direction and did not see who stabbed his friend. Remel’s sister, Chantelle, who worked at the bar, was looking at her brother when Mr Innes was stabbed. Michael Oluyitan, the only one of the four defendants to give evidence, told jurors: “I wasn’t the closest one to him [Alex]. I didn’t see nothing at all, sir.”
What was captured was Alex Innes running backwards, then turn back to the bar, pick up his glass and return to the group.
Chantelle told the jury: “He ran across the road, lifted up his top and I said to myself out loud 'he's been f***ing stabbed'. Then he came back and I shouted 'no' because he was about to hit someone with a glass.”
Oluyitan, Morton and Johnson-Allen also saw his return. They were said to have chased him back up the road, with prosecutors claiming all were armed with knives of their own – although the jury cleared them of wrongdoing.
Alex made it little more than 100m up the road before collapsing to the ground.
Shohaib Ahmed, out getting food with another friend, got a call from Mr Innes at 12.43am. “He’s said ‘yo, I’ve been stabbed’. He’s a bit of a jokey guy, so I thought he was joking at first.”
They could hear the phone hit the floor. “I said to my mate ‘look, I don’t think he’s joking’.”
Mr Innes died at the side of the road. He had been stabbed – once - through the heart.
Arrests
The four co-defendants went in different directions after the stabbing, but they took their time. Muinami stayed back, but others – including Keyarno Johnson-Allen – went to help.
All but Muinami were arrested that evening. The killer was picked up a few days later, when he was caught on police bodyworn camera as he was cuffed and read his rights.
Muinami ditched the murder weapon, changed his top and his mobile phone went off the radar.
When his home was searched, police officers found a number of knives. In a taped prison call to a friend while he was on remand, Muinami said: “They found weapons I didn’t even know were there.” He said of one knife: “They [the police] found that. I couldn’t even find that myself.”
Knife crime slammed
In an impact statement read to Oxford Crown Court when Muinami was sentenced on Friday (September 8), Mr Innes’ paternal uncle Robert tore into youth knife culture.
“Why are so many of our young men being killed in such a brutal way?” he asked.
Calling for change, he said: “It is real life. It is not a cheap movie or a game. The next victim may be your loved one.”
Defence brief David Hislop KC’s client was out of the dock, having left for what appeared to have been a short comfort break, said it was ‘two lives wasted over the price of a pair of trainers’.
“To describe it as a tragedy is almost an understatement,” he added.
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