Shrewsbury busker murder accused bought new trainers, jury told

Bradley Davies told a jury he later dumped the old Niki trainers he was wearing at the time Mr Bebbington was attacked which he had attempted to burn in his back garden.

At Birmingham Crown Court yesterday 18-year-old Davies said he went barefooted with his mother and cousin Kayleigh Davies to buy a new pair of the same type of trainers. The shopping trip was the morning after the attack on 43-year-old Mr Bebbington on a canal towpath.

Under cross-examination Davies said they later drove to the countryside with his pair of trainers – and one shoe from his co-accused Stewart Doran – inside a pillowcase and a carrier bag which was stuffed into a hedgerow.

It followed an attempt to burn the two defendants shoes in an oil barrel at the rear of Davies's home in Westering, Ditherington. The jury has heard that Mr Bebbington died hours after being kicked and stamped on in September last year.

Davies accepts being involved in an initial assault on Mr Bebbington, but not a second incident and denies the charge of murder.

Doran, 22, of Bainbridge Green, Harlescott, has admitted murder and will be sentenced later.

Questioned by Mr Chris Hehir, prosecuting, yesterday Davies said the purchase of the trainers to show to the police was not part of a plan, but he and his mother had panicked. He told the jury that he had "pretty much" told her what he had done and she did not know what to do. "She was trying to protect me," he said.

Earlier Davies, of Westering, Ditherington, Shrewsbury, denied that he saw Mr Bebbington as "a smelly tramp" and only had contempt for him and that is why he was attacked. He told the jury that after his arrest he had kept to "the story" suggested by Doran about going out to buy cannabis but later decided to "just tell the truth".

Davies said that he had only continued to say nothing about burning clothes and trainers to protect his mother.

The trial continues.