A Gravesend man was allegedly choked to death by his cousin - who strangled him and dragged his half-naked body into a bath, a court heard.

Danny Wallis, 29, of Clarence Row, was found dead in his bathtub last May, wearing only his boxer shorts and socks.

Canterbury Crown Court heard that Mr Wallis’ younger cousin, Travis Smith, 24 - who denies murder - strangled him to death on the night of May 30 at his Gravesham Court flat.

Smith then dragged his dead cousin into the bath, filled it with water, and left for a drink at The Robert Pocock pub in Windmill Street, wearing Mr Wallis’ padded jacket, the jury was told.

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Danny Wallis, 29, of Clarence Row, Gravesend

Almost 24 hours later Smith made a 999 call to the ambulance service from a telephone box outside the same pub, telling them, “we had a fight and that and the next minute he died”.

Before Smith phoned for an ambulance, phone records show that he had telephoned members of his family.

In a call to his mother, Josephine Whittington, it is alleged that he confessed to killing his cousin.

Prosecutor James Mulholland QC said: “Having sworn his mother to secrecy, he told her he had killed Danny.

“In his version of events, he told her he was trying to protect Danny from others around him.

“He said he had gone into his flat and kicked out ‘crack heads’ because they were going to give Danny ‘crack’.”

The prosecution told Judge Adele Williams, that Smith had also made a call to his half-sister at 4.37pm, telling her, “he was trying to hit me and he had a knife, so I got him in a headlock”.

A post-mortem examination, carried out by Doctor Benjamin Swift on June 2, showed that the force of being throttled had fractured a bone in Mr Wallis’ throat and that Mr Wallis would have passed out within 10 - 30 seconds.

However, the injuries he sustained were from several minutes of strangulation in what the prosecution described as a “vice like grip”.

Mr Wallis had also been beaten around the head and face - both his eyes were bruised and he had sustained cuts to the bridge of his nose and forehead in a “one-sided attack” the prosecutor said.

Mr Wallis had lived in-and-around Gravesend since he was 12 years old.

In July 2008, Mr Wallis had accidentally taken a drugs overdose, causing a cardiac arrest.

The overdose put Mr Wallis into a coma, after recovering he received carers twice-a-week to help him carry out day-to-day activities - making him a “vulnerable individual”, the court heard.

The trial continues.

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