A jury trying an asylum seeker accused of murdering a hotel worker in a stabbing at a railway station has retired to consider its verdicts.
Jurors were sent out on Friday after hearing two weeks of evidence, speeches and summing up in the trial of Deng Chol Majek, who denies the murder of Rhiannon Whyte and possession of a screwdriver as an offensive weapon.
Wolverhampton Crown Court has heard that Ms Whyte was stabbed 23 times on a platform at Walsall’s Bescot Stadium station on October 20 last year, and died of her injuries in hospital three days later.
Prosecutors allege DNA evidence and CCTV footage prove Majek was Ms Whyte’s attacker and that he also visited a shop to buy beer shortly after the late-night attack.
Majek told the court he was at Walsall’s Park Inn hotel, where Ms Whyte worked and he lived, at the time she was stabbed and suffered a fatal brain stem injury.
Before sending the jury out, trial judge Mr Justice Soole instructed the panel that their first task would be to appoint a foreman to chair their discussions.
In her closing speech to the jury on Thursday, Michelle Heeley KC alleged that Majek had been “utterly callous” when he was seen dancing in a car park after Ms Whyte had been stabbed.
Addressing whether jurors could be sure Majek was the person who attacked Ms Whyte, Ms Heeley said: “You may think it’s not really a difficult question. I suggest his answers to you are laughable. He is trying to meet the overwhelming evidence, and he has failed.”
Defence barrister Gurdeep Garcha KC told the jury: “The only issue is, has the prosecution made you sure that he’s the person that followed Rhiannon Whyte and inflicted those injuries upon her.
“There are very significant gaps in the prosecution evidence and given those gaps, the question for you is, and remains, can you be sure that he is the attacker in view of all the gaps and all the evidence that they don’t have?”
