A woman who saw murder-accused Lewis Brown in the wake of a fatal stabbing in Barton said he asked in surprise: “Only stabbed him once, how did he die from that?”

Brown, 20, arrived at Kayleigh Kimber-Johnson’s home in Hengrove Close, Barton, shortly after 8.30pm on October 8 last year – two-and-a-half hours after he is said to have stabbed 39-year-old Lee Butler to death. 

She told jurors at Oxford Crown Court yesterday that the young man appeared ‘very nervous’ and kept looking out the window.

By that point, Ms Kimber-Johnson knew about the stabbing and was aware from Facebook posts that Mr Butler had died.

She showed him an article on her laptop about the incident. 

"Lewis started to look at what it was you showed him,” defence counsel Frida Hussain QC summarised from a police statement she made last October. 

“[Brown] said: 'Only stabbed him once, how did he die from that?' 

“Your assessment of that was that he seemed surprised and he said 'what, what, I can't believe he died from one stab wound'."

Oxford Mail: Hengrove Close, Barton Picture: GOOGLEHengrove Close, Barton Picture: GOOGLE

Ms Kimber-Johnson earlier told the jury: "I said what have you done? And he said that he'd only stabbed him once and how did he die from that?"

She could ‘feel’ Brown’s panic, she told the jury yesterday. 

The mum-of-two added: "I have been in a similar situation to what Lewis was in that night. But my victim didn't die. I totally understood how he felt."

Brown was said to have used her phone to call someone called ‘Kyle’, whose number the defendant didn’t have on his cheap Samsung handset but was a Snapchat contact of Ms Kimber-Johnson’s.

She confessed to hiding the ‘burner’ style phone in a laundry basket in her home. The mobile was later recovered by the police.

Questioned by prosecutor Charles Ward-Jackson, she said Brown had spent the time between his arrival and when he fled the house after midnight speaking on the phone, talking to her and others in the house and drinking. 

“At one point I did tell him it would probably be best if he went because the police would come then another woman turned up and I swore, I told hm you need to f***ing get out”, she said. 

She denied hearing Brown tell other youths in the house that Mr Butler had tried to rob him.

Police officers arrived in the street at quarter-past midnight to try and arrest Brown. Sgt Mark Allmond told the jury they followed crashing noises to the back garden then tried to follow over a back fence. 

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A dog unit was called in, but it was shouts from a garden five doors down that led them to Brown, who was spread-eagled on the floor with his arms out. He was arrested at 1.13am.

Brown, of Barton Village Road, Oxford, denies murder and possession of a knife. The trial continues.

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