Corby drug dealer said he was in police custody when he was accused of kicking a man in the head in Everest Lane
A Corby man who was convicted of running a cocaine county line has had a GBH case against him dropped after a jury failed to reach a verdict.
Tyrone James, was convicted in August of dealing class-A drugs in Corby along with a group of gun-toting pals.
But in mid-September he was back before the court to face a separate charge of grievous bodily harm connected to his drug dealing activities.
A jury heard that the 23-year-old had allegedly been part of a gang that had kicked a man to the head several times while he was on the floor behind Everest House, which is above the shops in Everest Lane, in Corby town centre. But James said that he couldn’t possibly have been part of the gang because he had been in police custody before grabbing a McDonalds at the time the attack was taking place.
The panel could not reach a verdict after more than a day of deliberations and the case against James has now been dismissed.
During the trial in September, Northampton Crown Court was told that James had been arrested on separate matters on August 18 last year and had been questioned at Weekley Woods Police Station.
At 5.30pm that day a Corby police officer was on duty in the town centre when he was asked to go to the alleyway between Everest Lane and New Post Office Square after a report of an assault.
Prosecuting, Pree Brada, told the trial that when the constable arrived on the scene, a member of the public told him the victim’s black bike was lying on the floor nearby. He went to move it then spoke to the victim.
"He said he’d been attacked by a group of males,” said Ms Brada.
"The officer got him back into his flat in Everest House before he headed off to hospital.”
At Kettering General Hospital, he was examined at 6.28pm and found to have multiple bruises to his head and a deformity to the left side of his rib cage.
Ms Brada said that a member of the public who had witnessed the incident from their car in Everest Lane said that the men had run off from the alleyway into one of the flats.
More officers who had arrived on the scene went into the flat and found James there topless, wearing only tracksuit bottoms.
He was arrested at 6.12pm on suspicion of GBH and handcuffed before being taken back to custody.
Another witness who had been on the scene had told the court that she had been walking from her work through New Post Office Square towards Argos.
"There was big to-do in the alley,” she told the court.
“I saw a large group of about 10 to 15 males stamping on a large black mountain bike, completely destroying it.
"I looked to the right and there was a man holding his torso and scratches to his head." The witness said all the men were wearing the same grey tracksuit. She called police at 5.33pm.
A detective who had interviewed James while he was in custody earlier on the day in question said he had been released at 4.51pm and an officer had offered him a lift back to Everest Lane, where his friends lived.
But under cross examination from barrister Paul Vickers, she conceded it could take up to 15 minutes for someone to go through the release procedure.
Mr Vickers said his client had asked to be dropped at McDonald’s in Corporation Street and simply could not have got to Everest Lane from Kettering, via McDonald’s, in the 40 minutes after being released from custody during rush hour on a Friday.
The court heard there was no evidence that James had been to McDonald’s.
A week after the attack the victim, a 43-year-old man, positively identified James in an ID parade. In his police statement the man said: “There were two attacks, a few hours apart.
"This person (James) was the main instigator. I was knocked to the ground and kicked to the head and ribs. My ribs were then broken by him and multiple other people who were waiting for me in the entrance.”
The jury was not told of James’s recent drug conviction. Before they retried, they were reminded they must be sure that James was present at the scene at the time of the attack.
But after their deliberations, the jury could not reach a verdict.
So James was back in court last week to hear whether his case would go to a retrial. The prosecution confirmed they would not seek a retrial and so James was officially found not guilty.
In July this year, Logan McBride, 18, of Everest House, stood trial after denying his part in the attack. But he was found guilty of assault by magistrates and given a community order.
In 1993, 18-year-old Iain Dyne was kicked and stamped to death by a group of boys in a spot only a few yards away from the most recent attack in Everest Lane. One of those boys, Leon Hill, served his prison sentence and then came out to kill another man, Garth Muir, in Corby in 2006.