THE mother of a man accused of murdering a Southampton teenager told jurors how her son was crying and panicking in a middle of the night telephone call.
Caroline Coombes described how she had been woken up by a call from Scott Townson’s girlfriend who asked her to ring him.
When she spoke to her son, he was in “one hell of a state”, she told the court.
Townson asked his mum what he should do after admitting he had beaten up Luke Woolf, a former housemate.
Mrs Coombes said: “He said he had punched and kicked him, he was crying and generally panicking. I advised him to call the police and ambulance.”
She said he sounded as though he had been drinking or was on drugs.
Mrs Coombes was giving evidence in the trial of her son who has denied murdering Mr Woolf at the house for single and homeless young people in Northam, Southampton.
Salisbury Crown Court had previously heard how Mr Woolf, 18, had been asked to leave after breaking rules but on the night of his death, had returned to the house in Radcliffe Road, to sleep in the lounge.
The prosecution claims he was beaten up, dragged across the road and dumped in a park where he was found unconscious by paramedics following a 999 call. He had suffered serious head injuries and underwent emergency surgery after doctors found bleeding between his skull and brain. He remained in a coma and died several months later in hospital.
Townson, 21, told detectives he had acted in self-defence after being grabbed and pinned against a wall by someone he believed was an intruder. He did not realise it was Luke until he switched the light on.
Mrs Coombes told the court she spoke to her son again in the morning when he was more subdued and again at lunchtime when she told him she was going to the police.
He asked her not to and she ended the conversation.
Under cross-examination from Tim Mousley QC, defending, she admitted her son had trouble with drugs and was on a nine-month drug intervention programme and on 12-month supervision from court. “He was doing well.”
At the police station, she said she didn’t know where he was. “I thought he was running around here, there and everywhere, panicking.”
Proceeding
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