Killer passenger was ‘cornered like a mouse’

A train passenger accused of murdering an IT consultant had to use the lock-knife in his pocket after the bigger man cornered him ‘like a cat with a mouse’, the Old Bailey heard.

Darren Pencille, 36, stabbed 51-year-old Lee Pomeroy 18 times in less than 30 seconds on board the Guildford to London Waterloo train on January 4.

The argument broke out after Pencille allegedly made a ‘snide’ remark as he jostled past the Mr Pomeroy and his 14-year-old son heading along the gangway.

CCTV footage shows the pair remonstrating before Mr Pomeroy gets up out of his seat and follows Pencille through into the adjoining carriage, eventually stopping at the last set of doors.

Fellow passengers have described hearing Pencille telling Mr Pomeroy to ‘f**k off’ and ‘leave me alone’.

Pencille was seen by psychiatrists as both an inpatient and as an outpatient between 2004 and 2018 during which time he has been prescribed medication for mental health problems.

Jurors have been told it would sometimes take him up to four hours to complete a one-hour journey because he would ‘keep getting off the train because he was anxious’.

Pencille, who denies murder, declined to give evidence in his own defence.

But his barrister Justin Rouse QC told jurors in his closing speech that Pencille was ‘cornered’ and left with no choice but to keep stabbing after the bigger, more aggressive man refused to let him go.

Although no psychiatric defence was being put forward, Mr Rouse said Pencille’s mental health was ‘the elephant in the room in this case’.

Jurors heard evidence from one of the doctors treating him who recalled how Pencille told him he had feared for his life since 2009.

He asked whether Pencille was a person who they might ‘in layman’s terms refer to as someone with special needs’ after they heard from passengers who recalled Mr Pomeroy using the phrase during the argument.

‘Obviously, he may have believed he was being attacked precisely because he was unwell,’ Mr Rouse said.

‘You may recall that was something said to him just before the fight actually started.’

He told jurors that Pencille was actually talking to himself when he kept repeating the phrase ‘get off the train’.

‘Why was this man coming after him?’ Mr Rouse continued.

‘What was he hoping to achieve?

‘We can see Darren Pencille fleeing down the train, down the carriage, all the way until he can go no further to get away.

‘You may think that if Darren Pencille wanted to have a fight and if he really wanted to be the aggressor, he could have had a fight as they argued over the comment where Lee Pomeroy was sitting down.

‘Or he could have had a fight at the first doors of the carriage.

‘But he kept moving away and kept trying to disengage.

‘This is a man you are being invited to convict of murder.

‘Look hard and look honestly at who the aggressor really is.’

Jurors heard Pencille arrived at the station shortly before the train arrived having been dropped off by 28-year-old girlfriend Chelsea Mitchell.

‘He boarded the train, and what a funny little figure he must have cut with his Charlie Brown hat and sunglasses in January,’ Mr Rouse said.

‘Did he look like a vulnerable person as he walked onto the train?

‘Did Lee Pomeroy realise there was something odd about this man?

‘What happened to trigger all of this?’

In his video recorded interview with police Mr Pomeroy’s teenage son told them his father goaded Pencille during the initial row after his snide comment that ‘Ignorance is bliss’ as he jostled past.

After another exchange he got up and went after him with his fist clenched, the 14-year-old recalled.

‘Why did he do that?’ asked Mr Rouse.

‘If you had been Lee Pomeroy would you have shrugged all this off as an oddball who had come out with a silly line and carried on with your day or would you have chased him down that train?’

He contrasted the six-foot-three Mr Pomeroy, weighing just shy of 100kg, against ‘this little man’.

‘If Lee Pomeroy had just stopped and turned around and walked away this would have ended there and then,’ the barrister continued.

‘You know that after it was over, and the officer agreed with this, Darren Pencille didn’t take a step towards Lee Pomeroy once he did back away.

‘Lee Pomeroy was moving backwards and forwards and this was becoming a dangerous confrontation – a cat with a mouse.

‘One of them you may think if you watch the footage carefully was enjoying himself and the other one was truly frightened.’

He added: ‘The truth is Lee Pomeroy thought he could not lose this fight.’

Mr Rouse reminded jurors of the pathologist’s opinion that each of the 17 additional wounds following the fatal neck injury were inflicted with only moderate force.

He said that suggested Pencille was ‘not really committed to this but felt he had no choice’.

Pencille, he said, ‘continued to stab because he realised this man was not going to stop’.

‘He couldn’t know that Lee Pomeroy didn’t realise he was being stabbed,’ Mr Rouse added.

‘Perhaps if he did he would have stopped.

‘But he didn’t, so he kept on stabbing on and on and on in panic and nothing more.

‘This defendant was so panicked that he even cut himself.’

Jurors were told Mr Pomeroy had ‘trapped’ Pencille ‘right up against the corner’ where he could eventually be seen ‘punching him and kneeing him’

‘He had been taken into a dead end,’ Mr Rouse added.

‘The fight started.

‘He was being punched and he kept stabbing.

‘And all this because he mildly insulted a man who came after him.’

Pencille, of no fixed address, denies murder while Mitchell, from Farnham in Surrey, denies assisting an offender.

The trial continues.

ends