A TEENAGE murder suspect admitted going to shops in Winsford armed with a large knife ‘to scare people’.

The 17-year-old from Crewe, who cannot be named for legal reasons, started to give evidence at his trial over the fatal stabbing of Keagan Crimes.

The trial saw him acquitted of one of the four charges he faces when it continued at Chester Crown Court on Monday, January 10.

Prosecution barrister Gordon Cole QC told the jury that no further evidence could be brought in relation to count three, which was a charge of unlawful wounding against an individual.

The teen also changed his plea in relation to count four – being in possession of a bladed article in a public place – to guilty.

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During the testimony provided to the court, the youth said how he had been ‘hanging about’ in Winsford for about a month or so before the stabbing on October 11, 2020.

A friend of his from Crewe had moved to the Cheshire town some years previously and they had stayed in contact.

Earlier in the day, Mr Cole had shown the jury a number of images of the defendant, one of which was of him lying on a bed at a Winsford flat.

Under questioning from his own barrister, Michael Hayton QC, the teen admitted how the knife seen in the photograph was the same one he took to Cheviot Square on that fateful Sunday evening.

Discussing what had led up to the confrontation with older men outside the Premier Shop, the 17-year-old described how he and four or five others had broken the window at a property at around 6am on October 11, 2020.

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“Someone said how the person who lived there sold a lot of drugs,” the teen said.

“They wanted to rob his drugs.

“When we got to the house, someone walked up and smashed the window as that is where I’d been told he kept the drugs.”

At around 7am, the youth had been back at the same Winsford flat he had been photographed at holding the knife, when a gang of several older men came to the door.

“They were all wearing balaclavas,” he added.

“Four of five of them came in and they threatened to shoot two of the lads I knew in the kneecaps if they didn’t stop selling drugs for the Scousers.

“You’d be better off selling them for us.”

Later on that day, threats were made over Snapchat and one of the other people present at the flat reported how a gun had been pointed at his head when he’d gone out to sell some weed.

The teen went on to say how the older men returned to the flat in the evening to make further threats, which prompted him to take the knife out of a kitchen drawer and eventually leave the property.

“I didn’t have a plan. I just took it to scare people so that they would leave us alone.

“I was just young. I wasn’t thinking properly.”

The trial continues.