A man murdered a teenager by thrusting a bottle into his neck following a race row at a taxi rank, a jury has been told.
Alex Peguero Sosa, 17, who was of mixed race, was attacked by Lee Dent, 42, in Devon, in the early hours of a morning last July, Plymouth crown court heard.
The jury was told that the attack happened after a friend of Dent’s referred to Alex’s hair as being an afro. It is claimed that Dent later told a friend “the fucking nigger deserved it”.
Simon Laws QC, prosecuting, said Dent was among a group that had been socialising in the market town of Kingsbridge while Alex, a former Plymouth Argyle youth player, had beenin the area with some of his friends.
Both groups ended up at a taxi rank and one of Dent’s friends, Claire Jarvis, made the comment about Alex’s hair. Laws said: “Alex was of mixed race. Alex and his group took exception to this, saying that Claire Jarvis was being racist.”
Laws said Peguero Sosa and Dent had been squaring up to each other when Dent picked up a bottle and smashed it into Alex’s neck. Laws said: “Out of the blue Dent swung his right hand to the left side of Alex’s neck. Alex backed off and held his hand to his injury.”
As blood poured from his wound, Dent’s partner, Devon Rowe, said: “You have killed him, you have killed him.”
Laws went on: “It was an act of pure aggression from the defendant. It was a situation he could have walked away from at any point. Instead he chose to resort to violence of an extreme kind and a young life was wasted as a result. There is no doubt that it was his hand that held the bottle.”
He said Dent, who has a secondhand tyre business, came up with two “untruthful” accounts of what had happened, the first that he acted in self defence and the second that Alex was armed with a knife.
“He has also said he did not realise that he had a bottle in his hand, that he had only meant to throw a punch. He picked up the bottle moments before he used it.”
The jury heard a piece of glass from the bottle remained in Alex’s neck until the postmortem was carried out, but Dent has not said what happened to the rest of the broken bottle.
Dent went to his friend Henry Felton’s flat and told him “the fucking nigger deserved it”, it is alleged.
The defendant dumped Alex’s blood-soaked clothes in a binbag in a recycling bin but the police found them the next day; his DNA was all over them because his blood had gushed from his neck, the jury heard.
Felton, 22, has admitted perverting the course of justice by helping Dent and he will be sentenced at the end of the trial.
The court heard Dent cut his hand in the attack and a trainee nurse associate treated it. He told her: “I think I have killed someone, he pulled a knife on me and I stuck a bottle in his neck’.
Dent was arrested the following morning in Kingsbridge and told a police officer: “He just would not leave me alone.”
Dent, of East Portlemouth, south Devon, denies murder.
The trial continues.
