A TRIAL has heard how a teenager casually bragged of murdering his friend by telling a neighbour “you’ll never guess who I have killed”,

A jury at Newcastle Crown Court heard video evidence taken from Michaela Jones days after the death of Mark Shaw, who was tied up, beaten and choked with a belt before he was stabbed to death.

Miss Jones, who lived on Queen Street, in Grange Villa, near Chester-le-Street, next door to Kieran Adey, 19, who is charged with murder, said she replied: “Who? He says ‘Mark, the alky’.”

Mr Shaw, 29, known to be a big drinker, was found dead on his bed on December 17 at 6pm after concerns were raised following rumours he had been killed.

Mr Adey is on trial along with Zoe Warren, also 19, from Washington, who was Mr Shaw’s girlfriend at the time.

Miss Jones said: “He told me that they had tied him up. They had wrapped a belt around his neck and started kicking and punching him.

“He bragged about having steel toe-capper boots on.

“He said he could not stop hitting him. He also told us that he had stabbed him.

“That girl who was involved with him, she was hitting with the heavy side of a pool cue.

“And that they had done it because he had grassed him up for smashing the windows. And she had helped because he had spent her last tenner.”

Miss Jones said she was under the impression Mr Adey and Miss Warren were high on amphetamines when the macabre conversation took place in her back yard at around midday, six hours before Mr Shaw’s body was found by police.

Miss Jones said Mr Adey was “looking like her didn’t have a care in the world. Wasn’t bothered that he had done it”.

She added: “It was like he was bragging about it really.”

Miss Jones said Mr Adey also admitted hiding and destroying evidence from the murder in the wooded area nearby.

She said: “They had burned stuff. They had hid a leather belt in a brick wall somewhere and they chucked his key down the dene.

“They had went back a couple of hours later, after they had actually done it.

“He says to me that they had untied him and when they took the belt off his neck he took a breath, and then he had died. He says ‘oh, he was definitely dead when they left him’.”

Miss Jones said Mr Adey was so casual about the subject she was not sure she could believe him.

When she asked him where Mr Shaw was she said he replied: “He is just lying in his [house].”

Mr Adey and Miss Warren both deny murder. Miss Warren denies a second charge of witness intimidation.

The trial continues.