UPDATED Man killed friend with hunting knife on Boxing Day morning jury told

A YOUNG man stabbed a friend to death with a hunting knife on Boxing Day minutes after texting “Merry Christmas” to him, a jury has heard.

Taylor Fenwick, 22, may also have had a kitchen knife when he confronted Luke Miller, 23, in the street, David Brooke KC, prosecuting, alleged.

Bloodstains found by police on Commercial Street, Tadcaster, may indicate that Mr Miller was trying to get into his car when he was stabbed, the prosecution barrister alleged at Leeds Crown Court.

After Mr Miller collapsed on the ground, Fenwick allegedly told an eyewitness to tell the emergency services that Mr Miller had tried to break into his flat.

He made the same claim to police.

But evidence of other eyewitnesses and forensic and other evidence including the bloodstains by the car, alleged Mr Brooke.

“Rather than trying to get into the house, possibly he was trying to escape the attack from the defendant,” he claimed.

“The prosecution case is there came a point round about 7am or 7.10am, when he (Fenwick) became angry, perhaps at something Mr Miller was calling up to the window. He armed himself with at least the hunting knife, maybe both knives. He went outside into the road,” alleged Mr Brooke.

Fenwick, of Commercial Street, Tadcaster, denies murder.

Luke Miller (Image: North Yorkshire Police)

Opening the prosecution, Mr Brooke said. the two men had spent the evening of Christmas Day with friends at the Broken Bridge pub in Tadcaster before drinking with a group in Fenwick’s first floor flat.

He alleged that both men took cocaine and that about 7am, Fenwick ordered Mr Miller out of the flat.

The prosecution showed the jury CCTV of Mr Miller on the street in the minutes before his death.

“He looks like a young man who had had too much to drink and in fact is weaving about with a cigarette,” alleged Mr Brooke.

He showed the jury CCTV that the prosecution alleges shows the two men struggling over a knife in Commercial Street on Boxing Day and Mr Miller falling to the ground.

Paramedics tried to save his life but were unable to do so and Mr Miller was declared dead at 7.48am, said Mr Brooke.

The prosecution claims that a man seen running off screen on the CCTV immediately after Mr Miller falls and returning eight or nine seconds later is Fenwick and that during that time he hid the hunting knife in a street bin.

He claimed that Fenwick also left Mr Miller for about 83 seconds to return to his flat and leave a kitchen knife in the hallway of his flat in an attempt to pass it off as the weapon used in the stabbing.

Mr Brooke alleged that when police arrived, Fenwick told one: “I did it” before being sick.

Police found the knives in the bin and the hallway and forensic scientists found Mr Miller’s blood on both of them, alleged Mr Brooke.

They also found fibres on the hunting knife that the prosecution alleges show that it was the knife that stabbed Mr Miller.

The trial continues.