‘Murder on the dance floor’ at Pentonville prison
A Congolese gangster said his cellmate might have been ‘doing a dance move’ when he made a hand signal minutes before a rival gang leader was brutally stabbed to death, a court heard today (TUE).
Basana Kimbembi, 35, allegedly drove a hunting knife into Jamal Mahmoud’s chest as armed convicts clashed over a ‘lucrative’ smuggling route at HMP Pentonville in north London, on 18 October last year.
Prosecutors claim Kimbembi delivered the horrific ‘death blow’ to Mahmoud, 21, with a 17.5cm blade and then repeatedly stabbed his associate Mohammed Ali, known as ‘Jimmy’, during a fight on the fifth floor.
Jurors have seen CCTV footage of Kimbembi, his cellmate Joshua Ratner, 27, and Robert Butler, 31, lurking downstairs minutes before the brutal attack took place off camera.
Ratner appears to make a signal by raising his hands above his right shoulder and then pointing them downwards and to his left before the three murder suspects went upstairs.
When prosecutor Mark Heywood, QC, asked Kimbembi ‘what’s going on’ the defendant reduced the Old Bailey jury to laughter by joking: ‘He could be doing a dance move, I don’t know.’
Mr Heywood said: ‘Yes Mr Kimbembi, it’s perfectly possible 10 minutes before someone was killed that he was doing a dance move.
‘You and Mr Butler were waiting and you don’t move until Mr Ratner gets there do you, that’s the truth.’
Kimbembi replied: ‘It wasn’t nothing relevant.’
Ratner appears to put his hands into a sock and Butler can be seen putting his sleeves over his hands as they made their way upstairs.
Mr Heywood suggested they may have been concealing knives or other weapons before Mahmoud was fatally attacked out of sight of CCTV cameras.
Kimbembi, who was allegedly concealing a hunting knife inside his jacket, insisted he has no idea what was happening.
Mr Heywood asked: ‘Come on Mr Kimbembi, surely you can help us with that?’
The defendant replied: ‘No, I can’t help you with that.’
Mr Heywood suggested that when Kimbembi, Ratner and Butler went upstairs they ‘were trying to usher Mahmoud into [a] cell and there came a point when he said let’s go to the exercise yard’.
The barrister asked why a prisoner would have wanted to have a conversation in the exercise yard, which was filmed by CCTV cameras, rather than his cell on G wing.
Kimbembi joked: ‘I don’t know why, maybe he wanted some fresh are probably.’
Mr Heywood said: ‘You do understand we are talking about a man’s death don’t you?’
He added: ‘You, with that knife in your jacket, pulled it out, held the back of his neck and plunged it straight into his chest didn’t you?’
Kimbembi said: ‘I know what I did. I didn’t stab him.’
Mr Heywood continued: ‘And after that, not content with that fatal injury, you pulled the knife out, didn’t you?
‘You pulled it out of him, he fell away, isn’t that right?’
Kimbembi said: ‘No, that’s not what happened.’
Prosecutors claim Kimbembi then repeatedly stabbed Ali from behind or when he was lying on the floor during the chaotic fight.
Kimbembi accepts he may have inadvertently injured Ali as they wrestled on the fifth floor, but insisted: ‘I don’t know how it happened, I was struggling with him.’
Jurors heard Mahmoud, originally from Somalia, and the three murder suspects were part of rival gangs who had agreed to meet and fight after a dispute about contraband.
Kimbembi, originally from the The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Butler and Ratner, each deny Mahmoud’s murder and deny wounding Mohammed Ali with intent to cause him grievous bodily harm.
The trial continues
Ends
