The mother of Ipswich stabbing victim Tavis Spencer-Aitkens has accused a delivery driver alleged to have driven gang members to the scene of the fatal attack of “leaving her son to die”.
In an emotional outburst while 42-year-old Leon Glasgow was describing the attack on Tavis, his mother left the public gallery at Ipswich Crown Court and called Glasgow “a scumbag.”
“You left my son to die,” she said.
Glasgow, who is one of six defendants who have denied murdering Tavis in Packard Avenue, Ipswich on June 2 last year, told the court that after his passengers got out of his van he saw them “set upon” Tavis while he was on the ground.
He described them as rushing at Tavis and “jumping all over him.”
“It was like a gang move,” he said.
He said he saw “kicking and arms swinging” but didn’t realise that Tavis had been stabbed and struck with a bottle.
Glasgow said he hadn’t knowingly helped Tavis’s killers by driving them to Packard Avenue and he would not have agreed to make the journey if he had known what they were going to do.
Asked by his barrister Rudi Fortson QC how the outburst by Tavis’s mother had made him feel Glasgow said: “Bad.”
“I didn’t intentionally help anyone to kill Tavis,” he added.
Glasgow previously said that after dropping the passengers in his van in Yeoman Close he had driven to a quiet spot outside Ipswich to take drugs to calm his nerves.
He denied a suggestion from Oliver Glasgow QC, prosecuting, that he had in fact driven away from CCTV cameras and “prying eyes” to check the van was clean and that no bloody clothes or weapons had been left in it
Glasgow, 42, of no fixed address, Amusa, 20, of Sovereign Road, Barking, Yenge, 23, of Spring Road, Ipswich, Callum Plaats, 23, of Ipswich, Isaac Calver, 19, of Firmin Close, Ipswich, and a 16-year-old boy, who cannot be identified, have denied murdering 17-year-old Tavis in Packard Avenue on June 2.
During his evidence Glasgow described five passengers being in his van when it went to Packard Avenue.
He said in addition to his co-defendant Aristote Yenge and a man called “M” who were with him in the front of the van there were at least three other people in the back of the vehicle.
One of them was his drug supplier, Adebayo Amusa, and the other two were mixed race youths - one with what he described as “twisted” hair and the other with “big mushroom” hair.
Glasgow said that on the day of Tavis’s death he had been asked by Amusa to take him and “some of his boys to Nacton and back” in return for drugs and cash.
Tavis was allegedly attacked because of rivalry between two gangs - J-Block, from the Jubilee Park area of Ipswich, had perceived a loss of respect following a row between the 16-year-old defendant and Yenge and two of Tavis’s friends from the Neno gang from the Nacton area, during a confrontation in Ipswich town centre.
Simon Spence QC, for Plaats, told the court on Friday he would not be calling his client to give evidence.
He said that as a child his client had been diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder and attention defecit hyperactivity disorder.
He said Plaats had been assessed by a psychologist as having poor concentration and an IQ in the lower average range.
The psychologist also felt that if Plaats was called to give evidence he would have difficulty recalling events in chronological order.
All six defendants have now had the opportunity to give evidence and next week the jury will begin hearing closing speeches from prosecution and defence barristers before the trial judge embarks on his summing-up.
The trial continues
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