Thurrock quartet: murder trial continues (From Thurrock Gazette)

Thurrock quartet: murder trial continues

3:33pm Friday 28th September 2012 in News

A COURT heard today how neighbours rallied round to help a man after he was stabbed outside his home.

Jamie Usedon was left for dead after two men armed with knives attacked him outside his Clacton home.

But a jury heard how his cries for help were answered by neighbours in Dudley Road rushing to the scene.

And as he lay on the ground with blood pouring from a series of stab wounds, he was heard asking one neighbour to tell his partner Amy and family he loved them all very much.

Neighbours had been woken up shortly after 6am on March 15 this year by noises coming from the street.

Once they saw what had happened, they grabbed towels and went to help Mr Usedon.

"He was in a bad way, leaking like a sieve," one neighbour told police later.
 

Mr Usedon was on his way home after working a night shift for a demolition firm when two men dressed in black attacked him with large kitchen knives.
 

The attack did not last long but it left the 23-year-old with two stab wounds to his chest, two in the neck close to vital arteries, two stab wounds in the back, one to his right wrist and one which severed the little finger on his right hand.

Chelmsford Crown Court has heard how he spend two weeks in hospital and at one point, was in a medically induced coma on a life support machine.
 

The court heard how his mother Tracy took pictures of her son on her mobile while he was in hospital.

"They allowed me to visit him and I asked him who had done this to him and he said 'mum, I don't know" Mrs Usedon said in a statement read out in court.

Other statements from neighbours revealed a gory scene in Dudley Road as they tried to help Mr Usedon.

Richard Clarke had been woken at around 6.10am and told police he heard someone shouting "Amy I love you" and when he looked outside, he saw a man lying in the road.

Mr Clarke grabbed a towel and went outside and was quickly joined by other neighbours Vicky and Mark Sutcliffe.
 

They also had towels and they all used them to staunch the blood coming from Mr Usedon's many wounds.

Mrs Sutcliffe told police: "I asked Jamie what happened and he replied 'I've been stabbed.'

"His dog was going mad, running up and down the road."

Her husband Mark told police in a statement Mr Usedon was "relatively calm" and told him two men had appeared from nowhere and stabbed him.

Mr Sutcliffe used a towel on Mr Usedon's neck and said at one point he was "gushing blood" from the neck injuries.

"I told him he was doing really well and he said if they had not had knives, it would have been different," Mr Sutcliffe said.

The prosecution alleges Dale Frame, 25, of Broxbourn Drive, South Ockendon, and Daniel Yates , 40, of Araglen Avenue, South Ockendon, were the knifemen who had been driven to the scene by taxi driver Robert Knight, 50, of Lowlands Road, Aveley.

A fourth man, Edwin Schreech-Powell, 30, of Garth Road, South Ockendon, is alleged to have planned the operation.

All four deny conspiring to murder Mr Usedon.

Prosecutor Mark Milliken-Smith QC has told the trial the reason for the attack is not clear but there may be a suggestion drugs were involved.

The trial continues.