Man killed stranger while on licence from prison

A drug dealer who stamped a stranger to death after a car crash was released from prison on licence a year earlier, a murder trial has heard.

Leicester Crown Court was told Chukwuemeka Ahanonu was freed from a two-year sentence in July 2024, having been found with more than £1,000 in cash and a machete after going through a red light in September 2023.

Ahanonu, 23, is accused of murdering 56-year-old Nila Patel near Leicester Royal Infirmary in an attack caused by his use of cannabis on 24 June last year.

Ahanonu, originally from Peckham in south-east London, has admitted manslaughter but denies murder, claiming diminished responsibility.

The trial was previously told Patel had got off a bus after Ahanonu crashed and overturned a BMW.

He then pulled her from behind and attacked her. She died in hospital two days later after suffering brain damage.

In agreed facts read to the jury on Monday by junior prosecution counsel Caroline Bray, it was stated that a blood test for cannabis showed Ahanonu was almost four times the legal limit for driving.

Bray said it was agreed between the prosecution and the defence that no alcohol was found in a blood sample taken around three hours after the alleged murder.

But a test for THC, which is produced by cannabis use, found a level of 7.6mcg, above the limit of 2mcg.

Bray told the court that Ahanonu, of Dover Street, Leicester, was given a suspended sentence in June 2023 after being convicted of possession with intent to supply cannabis at his university flat.

The court heard his car was then stopped by police in August 2023 and again the following month, with officers finding a machete and cannabis in his vehicle during the second stop.

Ahanonu was charged and remanded in custody and later received a 24-month jail sentence for offences including possession of a bladed article and breaching a suspended sentence order.

Confirming that Ahanonu was on licence at the time Patel was attacked, Bray told jurors: "His licence began on his release from custody on July 19 2024. It was due to end on September 20 2025."

The conditions of the licence, Bray said, were for Ahanonu "to be of good behaviour", not to commit any offence, not to possess more than one telephone, and to live at an approved address.

In relation to the events on the day Patel was fatally injured, the court heard, Ahanonu has admitted dangerous driving, possession of cannabis with intent to supply and assaulting an emergency worker.

"He has also pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the basis he asserts he has a partial defence to murder of diminished responsibility," Bray told the court.

Following the end of the Crown's case, Ahanonu opted not to give evidence in his defence.

The trial continues.

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