Brothers deny 'murder' in car incident caught on camera by neighbour

Updated

A 75-year-old man was run over and killed by three brothers intent on exacting revenge on the people they blamed for stealing a cannabis crop worth £40,000, a court heard.

The death of Peter Lee outside his home in Tooting, south west London, was caught on camera by a neighbour using his mobile phone, the Old Bailey heard.

Jurors were told that Jonathan Palmer, 31, was behind the wheel but he had killed himself in jail while awaiting trial.

His brother Stewart and half brother Jason Lewin are on trial accused of Mr Lee's murder in June last year.

Prosecutor Alan Kent QC told jurors that while Jonathan Palmer had driven the car directly at Mr Lee, all three defendants had been "in it together".

He told jurors that the background to the killing dated back to July 2013, when Lewin's cannabis factory in Sutton, Surrey, was raided by three men.

Police arrived to find Lewin injured in the street in front of the remains of a cannabis factory he had set up.

Mr Kent said: "The cannabis that was grown was mature and ready to be cultivated. Three men broke in and beat Jason Lewin up and stole the cannabis and it was believed because others said later the value of that was about £40,000.

"To add insult to injury he was arrested and charged with cultivating cannabis and pleaded guilty and was sent to prison for two years.

"Having been released from that sentence, the prosecution says he wanted restitution or revenge or perhaps both."

On the day of the killing, the defendants had gone to another house in Tooting looking for a man they held responsible for stealing the cannabis.

Since he was in Thailand, they moved on to Mr Lee's home in Welham Road to "have a cup of tea" with him.

But when they arrived, Mr Lee was at the dentist and only his sons Terry and Danny were at home, the court heard.

Mr Kent said that having tea was the last thing on the defendants' minds and they were really intent on finding out who had taken the stash of drugs.

He said: "They broke into the premises and began to attack the occupants Danny Lee and Terry Lee because Peter Lee had gone to the dentist.

"What perhaps they had not expected though was for them to fight back as well as they did. The fighting ended up going through the kitchen and into the garden.

"It seems that the defendants were beginning to lose the fighting. At one point Lewin was held down in a pond and Stewart Palmer took flight.

"Peter Lee returned. He was out in the street and Jonathan Palmer left the premises and returned to the car. Having got in, he drove quite deliberately through the fence of the house and then reversed out and drove deliberately, the prosecution say, at and into Peter Lee and killed him."

Mr Kent went on: "We have in this case quite unusually a recording of parts of these events. We have a recording of the moment the car reversed out through the fence and into Peter Lee killing him because neighbours had heard the commotion and a neighbour used his mobile telephone to record what happened."

Lewin, 34, from Morden, south west London and Stewart Palmer, 29, from Brentford, deny murdering Mr Lee and carrying out aggravated burglary at his home together with Jonathan Palmer, from Carshalton.

Lewin also denies two counts of attempted aggravated burglary and affray relating to earlier incidents in Cheam and Tooting.

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