A TEENAGER initially lied about his whereabouts on the night a man died after challenging youths pelting him with rotten food, a court heard.

Jake Douglas, one of seven teenagers who deny the murder of 24-year-old Shane Tunney in the early hours of June 27 last year, told police he had been “getting wrecked and smoking weed” in a field in Billingham.

But in a police interview detectives showed Mr Douglas CCTV footage of him both in and outside Tesco Express, in the High Street of Norton, near Stockton, at 10.30pm, where the incident involving the victim began.

Teesside Crown Court heard the 18-year-old was also picked out from an identity parade by a witness who identified him as being at the scene.

Mr Douglas told detectives in an original interview he had been in Billingham from about 9pm to 6am at a get-together for school leavers and had fallen asleep. However, he would not say who he was with.

Police showed him a statement taken from a friend who said Mr Douglas told him he was there when Mr Tunney was fatally beaten – being kicked and punched and hit with a metal pole.

Mr Douglas said: “He is lying.”

He said that while he had been at Tesco on the night of Mr Tunney’s murder, having gone into Norton for a “bag of weed”, he then returned to Billingham.

He told police: “I have done nowt wrong. I would not be able to live with myself if I killed somebody.”

He also denied being one of seven males seen on CCTV at about 2am walking towards the junction of Holly Street and High Street, Norton, where a confrontation took place involving Mr Tunney.

Details of Mr Douglas’s account emerged from recorded police interviews, transcripts of which were read to the trial jury.

The court heard how several of the accused had initially been arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm with intent, but after Mr Tunney, a car valeter from Norton, later died in hospital they were re-arrested for murder.

Three defendants, Kieron Harry Davis and two 17-year-olds, who cannot be named for legal reasons, “exercised their right to silence” during the interviews, said prosecutor Nick Dry, and made no comment.

Another of the accused, Brandon Pitt, 18, said he had stayed at his mother’s house and would have been asleep in bed at the time of the attack.

All of the defendants, who include Kearan Terry Davis and a 16-year-old youth, deny murder and also assaulting Mr Tunney’s friend Anthony Kirk.

The trial continues.