Stephen Lawrence Murder Trial Day 3: Royston Westbrook, Joseph Shepherd And Alexandra Marie Hear The Silence
STEPHEN Lawrence Murder Trial Day 3: Anorak’s daily look at the April 22, 1993 killing in the news: Royston Westbrook, Joseph Shepherd And Alexandra Marie hear the silence:
Prosecutor Mark Ellison is holding sway at the Old Bailey. Gary Dobson, 36, and David Norris, 35, deny murder.
Royston Westbrook is in the witness box. He says he was stood at the same bus stop as Stephen, 18, and his friend Duwayne Brooks. He saw the white gang approach in Eltham, south-east London.
“Stephen and Duwayne were stood right by the bus stop. They were talking about football, and just general chit-chat. They were discussing among themselves whether they should go back to the roundabout because they could see if the bus was coming. They decided to walk back to the roundabout.”
Many more were at that bus stop. The two black youths had gone to the top of the to see if the bus was coming. It was 10:30pm.
Says Westbrook:
“Stephen and Duwayne then started running towards the bus stop. At the same point, the boys on the opposite side of the road started to run. Stephen and Duwayne carried on towards Dickson Road, at that point the white boys started coming diagonally across the road. Stephen and Duwayne made it as far as the middle of Dickson Road and the white boys coming diagonally across the road came in to Dickson Road and they just collided.”
The white boys. The black boys.
“That’s just what it looked like. They were heading towards each other and that was it.”
Heading towards each other? A meeting of equals?
Duwayne escaped. Stephen was surrounded.
This was no meeting of equals.
“He went down, basically through sheer weight of numbers, in the middle. He was completely surrounded. It looked like, at the time, someone threw a punch at him, that’s all I could see. One of the group of white boys lifted a leg up to give him a kick. As he did that Stephen came out between his legs, staggered up and just ran up the hill.”
The 161 bus came. Westbrook got on. As it drove off he looked out the window. He saw Stephen lying on the ground.
“It was so quick, it really was quick – it was about 10 seconds – and my impression going away from that was that they managed to punch him and that was it.”
Amid the blows with fists had been blows with a knife. He’d been stabbed twice.
What did the gang do?
“They just stood there for a few seconds then they walked off. They didn’t run, they just walked off, quite casually.”
Says Westbrook:
“From my viewpoint, it was a completely unprovoked attack. They did nothing to justify it.”
He said a fellow passenger remarked to him:
“Looks like he got it because he was black, doesn’t it?”
Joseph Shepherd was at the bus stop.He knew Stephen Lawrence. He sees the white group. He says “something was said and basically they charged at them”.
Charged.
“They bundled in on top of them, they were shouting and cheering as they were running and attacking.”
The two black youths run past the bust stop. Brooks says:
“We’d better run home, it’ll be quicker.”
Then the police got involved. The “institutionally racist” police:
Mr Shepherd was able to give police brief descriptions of what he thought was a four-strong gang, but said he had been unhappy when police produced a photofit of one of the attackers, because “it didn’t look like what I had seen”. He added that he felt he had been “pushed into coming up with a picture”.
Frenchwoman Alexandra Marie was waiting at that bus stop. She stands in the box:
“There were some white men who were like kicking him and holding him at the same time, but the young man didn’t reply. He tried to protect himself.“
Not much noise at all. Just violence.
The trial continues.
Stephen Lawrence Murder Trial Day 2: “What, What Nigger?”
Stephen Lawrence Murder Trial: Gary Dobson And David Norris Take The Stand
Stephen Lawrence Murder: The Story In Photos
Posted: 16th, November 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
