The youngest of six defendants accused of murdering Ipswich teenager Tavis Spencer-Aitkens has denied being in a delivery van with fellow gang members when it drove to the scene of the fatal stabbing.

During his fifth day in the witness box at Ipswich Crown Court the 16-year-old boy denied he was a member of the J-Block gang from the Jubilee Park area of Ipswich and said he wasn’t in a van which allegedly drove gang members from Iris Close to Packard Avenue on the afternoon of Tavis’s death.

Cross-examined by prosecution counsel, Oliver Glasgow QC, the boy said he had got a lift in a delivery van driven by 42-year-old Leon Glasgow from Alderman Park to Iris Close with his co-defendants Aristote Yenge, Adebayo Amusa and someone called “M” on the afternoon of June 2.

However, he denied being in the vehicle when it left Iris Close and claimed that after getting out of the van he had collected crack cocaine from his supplier.

He had then spent around 90 minutes in a flat in Iris Close dividing the drugs into “shots” before getting a lift from a customer in a car to Handford Road.

The boy denied that his co-defendant Isaac Calver had been in the delivery van when it drove to Iris Close.

He told the court he had spoken to Calver close to the van at Alderman Park before it left for Iris Close and denied Calver had got into it.

In response to Mr Glasgow saying: “Of course he (Calver) got in the van. You are all J-Block” the boy said: “That’s not correct.”

During his evidence the boy has accepted there was rivalry between the J-Block gang and the Neno gang from the Nacton area and this had led to Tavis being killed.

He said he was a former member of J-Block but was no longer a member at the time of Tavis’s death on June 2 last year and had no interest in harming a Neno member.

In the dock with the 16-year-old, who cannot be named because of his age, are Aristote Yenge, 23, of Spring Road, Ipswich, Adebayo Amusa, 20, of Sovereign Road, Barking, Callum Plaats, 23, of Ipswich, Isaac Calver, 19, of Firmin Close, Ipswich, and Leon Glasgow, 42, of no fixed address.

They all deny murdering Tavis in Packard Avenue, Ipswich.

It has been alleged the attack on Tavis was the result of rivalry between the J-Block and Neno gangs for what J-Block perceived to be a loss of respect following a row between the 16-year-old defendant and Yenge and two of Tavis’s friends during a confrontation in Ipswich town centre.

The trial continues.