A MAN has told a court how he wanted to "break bones" when he beat Jamie Dack with a baseball bat the night before he and his friends allegedly murdered him.

Lee Nicholls said he wanted to hurt him "quite bad" and "leave him injured" but denied wanting to kill Jamie when he began the attack on the 22-year-old who he thought had tried it in with his girlfriend Amber Patterson.

He told jurors about how the incident unfolded in a flat in Bevois Mews, Southampton, on the evening of Thursday April 5, saying:" I used a baseball bat. He (Jamie) had swelling to his face, blood on his face, a broken nose I think and a puffed out eye."

He described how he hit him five times to the stomach, causing Jamie to crouch down.

The 22-year-old then asked Nicholls what he had done to deserve the beating and denied flirting with Miss Patterson.

Nicholls said: "He was just pleading with me that it wasn't true, that it was lies."

The 28-year-old described how he continued hitting him to the back of the head, stomach, arms, ribs and legs.

He told the court: "I was trying to teach him a lesson to what I thought was true."

He told how his co-accused Andrew Dwyer-Skeats and Ryan Woodmansey then got involved in the attack, hitting him with the baseball bat. Dwyer-Skeats then stamped on him and kicked him in the face, breaking his nose, Nicholls claimed.

The court then heard how Jamie began fitting "with foam coming out of his mouth".

Nicholls said:" I put him in the recovery position and just left him. I kicked him to get a response out of him, to see if he was still alive and with it and he was."

He had told the court earlier how he took Jamie a glass of water and gave him a duvet when the beating ended.

Nicholls then left and returned to the hostel in Southampton Street where he was staying, adding that Jamie was " in quite a bad way, he didn't seem with it, he seemed dazed."

Nicholls and his co-accused Andrew Dwyer-Skeats, 26, and Donna Chalk, 21, from Bevois Mews and Ruan Woodmansey, of no fixed address, deny murder.

All four admit perverting the course of justice.

Proceeding