A MAN was attacked and left unconscious in a Southampton supermarket car park – just weeks before he was allegedly tortured and murdered, a court heard.

Jamie Dack was found lying on his back outside Aldi in Bevois Valley, his right cheek swollen and a laceration above his eye, jurors were told.

A witness, walking home after a night out, reported seeing the 22-year-old surrounded by a group as he lay motionless on the ground.

Just over two weeks later, on Easter Sunday, Jamie’s body was found in a burning bin at Empress Road.

Winchester Crown Court has heard how before the grim discovery, he had been lured to a flat at Bevois Mews before being stabbed repeatedly to the neck, chest, abdomen, legs and shoulder and beaten by a gang who set out to rob him of his laptop and cashcard. Andrew Dwyer-Skeats, Donna Chalk, Lee Nicholls and Ryan Woodmansey all deny murder. The three men have admitted perverting the course of justice by disposing of and setting fire to Jamie’s body. Chalk denies that charge.

The court was told how police were alerted to an attack on the vulnerable youngster earlier on the evening of March 21.

PC Martin Livermore told the jury how he was the first officer to arrive on the scene after doormen at the nearby Hobbit pub were told of the assault and dialed 999.

Chalk, 21, and Dwyer-Skeats, 26, turned up shortly afterwards, he said, and the pair were arguing, with Chalk appearing to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs and using “foul and abusive language”.

The first paramedic on the scene, David Francis, said Chalk was also showing “compassion” towards Jamie. She said she had met Jamie at a party that night. Describing comments he had heard at the time, the officer told the court: “I recall (Chalk) saying Lee Nicholls had arrived back at the squat holding a baseball bat, saying Jamie was unconscious in Aldi car park.”

When PC Livermore visited Jamie in hospital later that night, he could not remember the attack. A week later, the officer visited the flat in Bevois Mews in response to noise complaints and found Jamie Dack there. He declined to make a complaint about the attack but said his phone was missing and he wanted to get it back himself.

The court heard how in the days following the assault, Jamie turned up at a hostel in Southampton Street looking for 28-year-old Nicholls, having heard that he lived there.

Hostel worker Andrew Blakely told the court that when he saw Nicholls he asked why Jamie had been looking for him.

“He told me that he and one of his friends beat him up,” he told jurors. “He told me the reason he had done it was that (Jamie Dack) was drunk and that he had put his hand down a girl’s trousers and the girl said ‘no’.” As previously reported, jurors have been told how Jamie had been lured to the flat a day before he died and the group had hatched a plan to steal and sell his laptop for money to go to an all-night party in Bournemouth the following day.

When that failed, it is alleged, they decided to steal his cash card, with Nicholls saying he would beat Jamie’s personal identification number out of him.

Proceeding