THE SHOCKING events that led to the death of drugs runner Taylor Williams should be this generation's anti-drugs message, a lawyer has said.

Sarah Jones QC was making her closing statement in Mr Williams's murder trial on Thursday when she claimed the events of August 31, 2019 should "play side-by-side" with billboards and TV series "to help us understand the terrible toll class A drugs take on those addicted, those caught up and those dealing them".

It is claimed that the Bromley teenager, who was 18 when he was died of stab wounds in Basingstoke last year, was killed by Olamide Soyege and Terence Maccabee.

Summing up the prosecution's case, Ms Jones said: "Members of the jury, every generation has its anti-drugs message.

"I will show my age, but for me as a child it was Zammo in Grange Hill collapsing in misery as his classmates urged us all to 'just say no'.

"For some of you it might be billboards, for some it is the slightly less graphic, more ambiguous message 'talk to Frank'.

"But now for any of us who have worked our way through this trial, there have been two extraordinary images to play side-by-side to help us understand the terrible toll class A drugs take on those addicted, those caught up and those dealing them.

"On the one hand we see the heartbreaking image of 18-year-old Taylor Williams, collapsed on Shooters Way as blood literally drains from his body."

The other image, she said, was "the prospect of redemption" of one of the witnesses, who had turned her life around from being a 'cuckooed' drug addict in August 2019 to "someone who could stand up and say 'this is what I know'".

"We can see the jawdropping physical transformation of [the witness] as she gets herself out of the mire of addiction.

"It was like a before and after transformation from a magazine. It wasn’t just her physical transformation that showed how far she come. You saw her mental transformation.

"Through those interviews she changed bad choices who couldn’t stop those people from invading her house, to someone who could stand up and say this is what I know.

"I warned you all at the start of this trial there would be problems with the evidence we were able to bring to you.

"It wouldn’t be clear threads. The people who had the necessary knowledge of how Taylor Williams met his death came from the underworld he operated in.

"They wouldn’t come suited and respectable. There language was always going to be less precise, but you may feel they surpass our and perhaps their own expectations.

"That was because they came before you unvarnished and unpolished; real and, you may feel, authentic."

The trial had previously heard how Williams was working for a county lines drug network that went by the name of Ray.

Defendants Soyege and Maccabee had allegedly arranged a deal, only for them to attempt to rob the line of drugs, Ms Jones said.

In the altercation that followed, Williams was allegedly stabbed five times by Soyege.

But Soyege claimed that he and Maccabee had simply been there to buy drugs when Williams and his associates had attacked them.

Both Maccabee and Soyege are accused of murder, robbery and conspiracy to rob. Maccabee was acquitted of possession of a knife in Shooters Way after the judge deemed that he had no case to answer. Meanwhile, Soyege still stands accused of that charge.

Maccabee is also accused of having a knife in Bermuda Park, Popley, earlier that evening.

Paige Taylor is not accused of murder, but does stand trial charged with robbery and conspiracy to rob.

The trio deny all charges. The trial continues.