Drug dealer tells of the moment Koy Bentley was stabbed

The 22-year-old man said Koy thought at first he had been punched. 

But he said when the teenager lifted up the top he was wearing, blood was pouring from a wound from under his armpit.

“While we were staring at the blood coming down he started losing consciousness,” the man told the jury.

He said the teenager who had inflicted the wound apologised to Koy and grabbed hold of him before he fell and then lowered him into a swivel chair.

The man was giving evidence on Thursday at St Albans crown court where the teenager is on trial accused of murdering Koy last June. 

The teenager, from north London, who was 15 at the time and is now 16, denies the charge.

In the weeks leading up to Koy's death, the accused, the older man and Koy, were running a Class A drug supply operation from a flat in Rainbow House, Water Lane, Watford. 

That afternoon all three were at the flat as usual when it is alleged a “disagreement” broke out between Koy and the accused.

Prosecutor William Harbage QC said it to Koy being stabbed by the other youth twice in his chest.

The fatal wound passed through Koy’s ribs, into his chest cavity, through the lower left lung and into his heart.

Paramedics and an ambulance crew rushed to the flat but he died at the scene.

The 16-year-old and the 22-year-old have pleaded guilty to a charge that they conspired together and with Koy to supply a controlled drug of Class A.

The man, who cannot be named, has also pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice.

He instructed a women who was at the flat that afternoon to lie to the ambulance crew about how Koy had received his injuries.

He also told the another woman she should return to the flat and remove any incriminating evidence.

In the witness box he told the court he met the teenager who is on trial through Instagram.

He said they would talk about “getting money” and he told the jury “We decided to sell drugs.”

The man said he would regularly come to Watford from London to visit a girlfriend and he said he and the accused met.

He said they decided they would sell crack cocaine and heroin in Watford, but at that stage they didn’t have “a base.”

Continuing his evidence he said he met Koy Bentley in Watford Town Centre just weeks before he died.

He said that Koy told him and the defendant he had been involved previously with selling drugs but had fallen out with “some boys” who he’d been involved with at Rainbow House.

The man said Koy then told them he knew where there were some drugs hidden in the bathroom of the property and took them there.

In total, he said, there were “20 to 30” wraps of crack cocaine and heroin and he said Koy told them the boys who had been using the flat were no longer staying there.

As a result he said it was agreed between him, Koy and the defendant that they would sell the drugs from the flat.

He told the jury how at first they would go out into Watford Town Centre to make contact with people who looked like they would be interested in purchasing drugs.

The man said they would give out the number of a Nokia mobile phone that people could call and arrange to go to the flat and buy drugs.

He said the wraps were to be sold for £10 a time, but at first they would give some wraps away for free as a way of encouraging buyers to come to them for drugs.

When all the wraps had been sold he said he used the money they had made to buy more crack cocaine and heroin from London and returned with the new “stock” to the flat.

With the drugs and cash that was made from sales all being kept at the flat, he said “someone was there 24 hours a day.”

At night he said the accused would stay there while he would return to his girlfriend and Koy would be at his home because he was subject to an electronically tagged curfew between 7pm and 7am.

He told the jury they were paying the person that owned the flat £20 a day to use it.

The man told the jury how all three of them would spend their days inside the flat making wraps and dealing with any customers and smoking “weed.”

They all got on, he said, but he remembered one occasion where he heard banter between the two teenagers who were saying to each other “I will stab you, I will stab you.”

He said “It was banter, not serious, but I never liked hearing things like that, so I told them so.”

On June 5 last year he said he arrived at the flat around 11am and the accused and Koy Bentley were already there.

A call was made for someone to bring cannabis to the flat.

He said two women came to the flat to buy £30 of crack cocaine and heroin and when they left they said they were going shoplifting and would return to buy more drugs with the stolen goods.

He said he told them to get some aftershave.

The court heard that afternoon the women returned with stolen bottles of aftershave and they were given five wraps in exchange for them.

With the drugs he said the women went into a bedroom to smoke them.

He told the jury he was sitting on a sofa “sorting out” the drugs and the money while the accused was on another settee and Koy was sitting in a swivel chair.

Music was playing and he said they were chatting and in a “good mood.”

He went on “I noticed he (the accused) was next to Koy - he had got up. He was holding him by the neck. One hand was round the side of his neck. Koy was saying ‘Don’t hold me like that, no one holds me like that.”

The man said Koi was still sitting in the swivel chair and he went on “He knew he was going to get off, but he was just telling him. I told them to stop messing about. I said you are like kids, something like that, I don’t remember.”

He said he returned to what he was doing but then heard a “movement” and looked up again.

“I heard a movement, like a swivel chair movement. I heard a thud. I thought it was a punch. I heard Koy say ‘Are you done’ twice.”

He said he heard Koy say “sorry” and he said he was still holding his phone.

Asked about the accused, he said “He had a knife in his right hand. It was a stainless steel knife.

"It had blood on it...on the tip of the blade. His arms were by his side.”

The man said Koy stood up from the chair and pulled his jumper up.

“I could see blood pouring out from under his left armpit,” he said.

He told the jury he thought Koy at first assumed he had been punched and as they were staring at the blood he began to lose consciousness.

The defendant, he said, was apologising to Koy.

“He grabbed him before Koy fell and he sat him back down in the swivel chair.

The man said he and the accused were panicking at this point and he said he told him to apply pressure to the point where the blood was coming from.

He said he ran into the bathroom and hid the drugs in “backside”

The man said he hid a blue dagger type knife that was on the floor in a bag belonging to one of the women who had gone into the bedroom.

He said he told the women to call an ambulance and to say that Koy had fallen onto a knife.

“At that moment I wasn’t t thinking straight” but he said he felt he 'couldn’t just turn my back on him.'

“It was stupid but you do stupid stuff,” he said.

The man told the jury that Koy by now had “passed out” on the chair, but he thought he would survive.

He went on “I thought the accused had stabbed him when I saw that wound.”

The teenager ran out of the flat, he said, with a black jumper inside his jacket which he later thought must have been the knife.

He said he too left moments later and they ran towards the railway station before turning down an alleyway.

At one point in the alley he said he looked back to see the teenager reaching into a bush.

“I didn’t know it at the time but later on I knew the knife was there. I put one and one together. I thought what else would he be doing at that point”

The jury heard earlier that police eventually recovered the knife in the alleyway.

The case continues.