A SOUTHAMPTON man said he didn't call the police after witnessing the murder of Jamie Dack because it was “an awkward moment”.

Jurors at Winchester Crown Court heard Andrew Dwyer-Skeats say that he was unable to “think straight” when he was asked why he didn't raise the alarm following the killing of the young man.

Dwyer-Skeats, 26, from Bevois Mews, who denies murder, told jurors that he had been drinking and was on drugs during the day.

“I wasn't sure what I had seen was real or a dream. It felt weird and felt as though I wasn't there,” he said when asked why he didn't call the police.

He added that he was “scared” after he was threatened by Lee Nicholls, who has already admitted killing Jamie at a previous trial.

“I took [the threat] seriously,” he said.

Dwyer-Skeats said he had been out speaking to a friend, Aaron Dowling, before returning to the one-bedroom squat in St Denys.

The defendant said Jamie “already looked dead” when he saw him being stabbed by Nicholls and hit in the eye with a glass bottle by co-accused Ryan Woodmansey.

The 26-year old said he had seen Nicholls stab Jamie in the thigh earlier before heading out to a shop on Bevois Valley Road on Easter Friday last year.

When defending barrister Anthony Donne QC asked him why he went outside Dwyer-Skeats said: “I was disgusted by what had happened.”

Previously the court has heard how Jamie was tied up and beaten before he was killed.

The court has heard how that evening his alleged killers went to an all-night rave in Bournemouth and then came back to the flat to dispose of the body by putting it in a bin and setting fire to it.

Dwyer-Skeats, and his co-defendants Donna Chalk, 21, also of Bevois Mews, and Ryan Woodmansey, 33, of no fixed address all deny murder but have admitted perverting the course of justice.

Nicholls, 30, is on remand awaiting sentence for murder after admitting the charge during a previous trial while giving evidence in his own defence.

Proceeding.