BECKENHAM: Friends of Ben Hitchcock were 'shouting for help' (From News Shopper)

BECKENHAM: Friends of Ben Hitchcock were 'shouting for help'

1:02pm Monday 1st June 2009

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A TEENAGER saw friends of stabbed 16-year-old Ben Hitchcock yelling for help, the Old Bailey heard today (June 1).

Ben, of Blean Grove, Penge, was stabbed on June 23, 2007, after a gang fight involving up to 60 youths.

Some of those fighting in Southend Road, Beckenham, were allegedly carrying weapons including knives, sticks and a baseball bat.

Trouble flared after Ben and a group of boys from the Penge Block gang tried to gatecrash a party at a flat in Copers Cope Road, Beckenham, attended by members of a rival Lewisham gang.

Party-goer Sadie Mitchell said she was standing on the flat balcony when she saw eight boys she did not recognise shouting up to be let in.

Miss Mitchell said the boys were told to leave as they had not been invited but started shouting threats at the people in the party.

The party was broken up soon afterwards but Miss Mitchell saw the same boys, who she knew were from Penge, on the 54 bus she was taking home.

She claimed the boys crouched down when they saw a group of boys from the party before they ran off the bus and went after them.

A fight broke out on the street and the witness said the bus was unable to move for up to 20 minutes.

She said: “All of them were just fighting.

“There were people running up and down.”

Once the bus started moving again, Miss Mitchell saw Ben lying on the floor.

She said: “A boy was lying on the floor and his friends were round him.

“They were shouting for help.”

Royston Thomas, aged 19, of Hazel Grove, Sydenham, and Mitchell Elliott, aged 19, of Howerd Way, Woolwich, deny murder.

Andre Lawrence-Bennett, aged 18, of Brownhill Road, Catford, and Olatunji Olulu, aged 18, of Firhill Road, Catford, also deny the charge.

The trial continues.

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