Teenage girls among four accused of murdering man after ‘crack cocaine row’

Two teenage girls are among four defendants accused of murdering a man after a row about crack cocaine, a court has heard.

Eymaiyah Lee Bradshaw-McKoy, then 16-years-old, and Mia Campos-Jorge, then 17, allegedly took part in a fatal group attack on Anthony Marks near King’s Cross station, central London, in the early hours of August 10 2024.

Drug dealer Jaidee Bingham, who was 16 at the time, and drug user Harry Gittins, then 35, are also charged with murdering Marks who died five weeks later, the Old Bailey heard on Tuesday.

The two female defendants and Bingham were all operating a county lines drug network named Aaron which was used by Marks, 51, jurors were told.

Prosecutor Hugh Davies KC said at the trial opening: “It is objectively both depressing and no doubt shocking to be confronted by the realities of this for young people and in terms of them wasting their human potential.”

He added: “The case illustrates the depressing realities of the industry of class A drug supply and those dependent on class A drugs.

“At one end of the line are the users, in this case including Mr Marks and Mr Gittins – they were men in early middle-age whose lives were controlled by their habitual need to take class A drugs, that is depressing enough.

“Perhaps even more depressing is that they were being sourced from a county line, the Aaron line, that was being controlled on the ground by people that were still in law children.”

The prosecutor said the Aaron line, apparently run from a “trap house” on Frederick Street near Gray’s Inn Road, was most likely controlled by older people and that the young defendants can also be seen as victims of exploitation.

One of the girls claimed she had been violently robbed during a drug delivery for Bingham, who used the alias Ghost, and the group believed Marks was directly or indirectly responsible, jurors heard.

Meanwhile Gittins was “either ingratiating himself with his dealer and runners” or “decided that such attacks on runners were outside the rules of the game”, Mr Davies said.

The alleged victim acted at points aggressively and held items that could be used as weapons but was outnumbered and attacked while on the ground, jurors were told.

Habitual drug user Marks, of no fixed abode, was hospitalised after he ran into King’s Cross station, central London, intoxicated and with “very obvious and significant facial and other injuries”, the prosecutor said.

Marks later told police he had been kicked, as well as hit by a male “with a glass bottle and a black car bonnet”, following an altercation about stolen crack cocaine, jurors were told.

He told officers: “I met my local drug dealer, his name’s Ghost, he has a complaint. He’s complained that one of, one of the smokers had taken some drugs off one of the subsidiary girls and had run away with it.”

“Subsidiary girls” are used to deliver drugs and collect payment, Mr Davies said.

Marks continued: “I told him basically it’s got nothing to do with me, but he claims that I know who the people were. I said, yeah, I know who they were, but I never took nothing off them.

“Him and the two girls then chased me down the road towards the pub… a white guy who I’ve seen, a smoker like us, he grabs me, I fall to the floor – they proceed to stamp on me and hit me with a green gin bottle”.

A CT scan at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, revealed a subdural haematoma that caused his brain “to displace five to 8mm millimetres to the left” and was in the area of a pre-existing subdural haematoma.

Marks was then recalled to prison for breaching licence having previously been released and Brixton prison later recorded that he had suspected epilepsy, the court heard.

However, Marks was not receiving a therapeutic dose of antiepileptic medication while at the prison, increasing his risk of seizure, and he was not referred for a neurological scan after reporting slurred speech and losing consciousness, Mr Davies said.

His brain started to bleed on August 29 and doctors at King’s College Hospital, Camberwell, diagnosed him with an acute-on-chronic subdural haemorrhage.

He died on September 14 and multiple medical experts agreed this was a consequence of an acute haemorrhage following the violence, Mr Davies said.

Bradshaw-McKoy, 18, of Longford Walk, London; Campos-Jorge, 18, of Milton Road, London; Gittins, 36, of Regent Square, Camden; and Bingham, 18, are also accused of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

Bingham is further charged with possession of an offensive weapon, namely a bottle.

Jurors were told there is no apparent dispute about the defendants’ identities but “the questions at trial are who did what, and why? With what intention did each (defendant) act, and what resulted from, was caused by, their individual and joint actions?”