Asylum hotel murder trial shown video of suspect buying alcohol and dancing

A murder trial has been shown mobile phone and CCTV clips said to show an asylum seeker dancing and drinking in a car park after he allegedly stabbed a hotel worker at a deserted railway station.

The phone footage, filmed in the early hours of October 21 last year, is said to show Deng Chol Majek dancing, with the blue flashing lights of the emergency services vehicles called to assist Rhiannon Skye Whyte visible in the background.

Prosecutors allege Majek followed Ms Whyte from Walsall’s Park Inn hotel to a platform at the nearby Bescot Stadium station and stabbed her 19 times in the head with a screwdriver, leaving her to die from a brain injury three days later.

Majek, who is originally from Sudan and claims to be aged 19, is alleged to have thrown Ms Whyte’s mobile phone into a river at the station following the stabbing shortly after 11.15pm on October 20, and then to have gone shopping for alcohol.

CCTV footage shown to Wolverhampton Crown Court on Friday, presented to the jury by Detective Sergeant Rebecca Haywood, the officer in the case, showed a figure alleged to be Majek wearing a hooded jacket and carrying a bag.

Jurors were shown CCTV from cameras inside and outside the hotel, as well as those covering a car park, a bridge over the River Tame, and a footbridge leading to the platforms at the station.

The court heard that security cameras covering the platforms at the station were not working.

Part of the footage showed Ms Whyte, who was aged 27 and worked at the hotel cleaning and serving food, holding a mobile phone as she walked towards the station.

Further images showed a figure alleged to be Majek in a shop in the Caldmore area of Walsall, buying alcohol at a store in West Bromwich Street, and walking along several other roads including Broadway West and Alexandra Road.

The material also included someone alleged to be the defendant returning to the hotel at 12.13am and going into a room on the third floor wearing flipflops and leaving it wearing white trainers.

Describing the footage as it was played to the jury, Det Sgt Haywood said of film of “the suspect” alleged to show the victim’s phone being thrown off a bridge at 11.19pm: “He’s turning around and then turns back around, walks slightly down the bridge and now throws the mobile phone into the river.”

At another point during the playing of the CCTV, the officer was asked to tell the jury what the suspect was wearing.

“It’s a two-tone grey jacket, dark on the body and light on the arms, black cargo trousers and flip-flops,” the detective told the court.

The nine-second mobile phone clip, filmed by another asylum seeker at some point after 12.39am, showed blue flashing lights in the background, at one point zooming on in the emergency services.

Det Sgt Haywood confirmed to the jury that the lights seen in the clip were from the emergency services who had attended the train station.

Prosecutor Michelle Heeley KC then asked the officer: “Did we see where the speaker came from that people were dancing around?”

Det Sgt Haywood answered: “The defendant brought that to the location.”

Near the end of a day-long presentation of video evidence, jurors were shown a clip of a man alleged to be Majek walking with his arms raised in a hotel corridor at 12.55am.

Majek denies murder and possessing a screwdriver as an offensive weapon. The trial continues.