AN 81-year-old man has denied being the getaway driver for a county lines drug dealer accused of stabbing a rival in a drugs dispute.

Ian Hemmens, of Bognor Road, Chichester, is accused of driving Mahamud Sami away from the scene of the attack on Bognor Regis seafront on March 10 causing him to evade arrest and prosecution.

Amy Packham, prosecuting, told Portsmouth Crown Court that Hemmens was waiting in his green Citroen C3 car when Sami jumped into the back seat and hid in the footwell while the octogenarian drove him away.

She said Sami, a student based in Chichester, had evaded arrest but his accomplice, Akeem Adebayo, 23, of Colindale Avenue, Colindale, north London, was arrested and charged.

The 23-year-old is on trial accused of wounding with intent to cause GBH and two charges of possessing cocaine and heroin with intent to supply, while Hemmens is accused of assisting an offender.

Hemmens, a retired burger van worker who lives in a mobile home with his dog, told the court he had decided to drive to Bognor on the afternoon of March 10 out of "boredom" and to "go for a walk by the seafront".

He said he saw two men, who the court has heard were Adebayo and Sami, at the side of the road and decided to offer them a lift.

He said: "They were just stood there looking maybe for someone to pick them up, I thought I will pick them up and maybe I will have someone to chat to for 10 minutes."

Hemmens, who has no previous convictions, denied picking them up from their address in Chichester and taking any money for driving them, and said he did not have an arrangement to act as a driver for Sami.

He said that after he had parked in Bognor, an unknown man jumped in his car, and added: "I couldn't see who it was, they were in the well of the car and said, 'Get me to f****** Chichester'. In case anything happened to me I do as I am told."

Hemmens said he had seen blood on the hand of the man and added that he felt "shit scared".

The prosecution says Adebayo and Sami had chased after a Lithuanian man, Dimitrijs Semelis, who lived in Bognor, in a "dispute over the supply of drugs" before Sami stabbed him five or six times while Adebayo held him down.

Adebayo, who studied human resources management at GSM college in London and went on to work in retail, told the court he accepted that Sami was a county lines drug dealer but denied knowing this at the time or being involved himself in drug-dealing.

He denied being involved in the altercation with Mr Semelis and said: "I wasn't covered in blood, I wasn't holding someone down, I didn't see a knife, I didn't see any visible injuries on him, I didn't see any blood."

He said it was a "shock" when drugs were found on him when he was arrested.

Both defendants deny the offences and the trial continues.