A Basildon man implicated in a fatal stabbing drove up north and led police on a chase in a stolen car, a murder trial has heard.
Zack O'Keeffe, 20, of Stafford Green in Langdon Hills, is on trial at Chelmsford Crown Court for the murder of Kieran Shepherd.
Prosecutor Tracy Ayling KC told jurors how Mr O'Keeffe was arrested not in Essex but near Shropshire, after a car he was driving was traced there.
But when a West Mercia Police officer caught up to the car and put its blue lights on to try to pull it over, "Mr O'Keeffe increased his speed and was taking unusual routes off the main roads in an attempt to evade the police."
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A jury of six men and six women were shown dash cam footage of the police car pursuing Mr O'Keeffe's vehicle up a waterlogged country lane, through puddles so huge the officers had to put on their windscreen wipers.
They were also shown dramatic video of the moment O'Keeffe was pulled over and arrested by armed officers.
The plates on the car turned out to be fake, said Mrs Ayling.
"The car was stolen two weeks earlier," she said.
She told the jury Mr O'Keeffe would be pleading self-defence.
"In his case, there will be no dispute that he was responsible for inflicting the two stab wounds," she says.
"The question you will have to ask yourselves is why and in what circumstances.
"It will be Mr O'Keeffe's case that he inflicted them using a knife that was originally in the possession of Mr Shepherd."
The revelation prompted loud groans from the public gallery.
Inside Mr O'Keeffe's car when he was detained was his co-defendant Joseph Dawe, 20, of Greenland Gardens in Great Baddow.
A third defendant - 20-year-old Harrison Carpenter, of Ben Wilson Lane in Springfield - had already handed himself in.
All three have pleaded not guilty to murder.
In a statement issued via Essex Police after the fatal stabbing, Mr Shepherd's family said: “Kieran was a kind and loving son, brother and father. His loss has left a massive hole in the lives of his family and friends. Our lives will never be the same without him. He will be forever in our hearts.”
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