A university student ambushed his flatmate and stabbed him 30 times before cooking himself a pizza, a court heard. Zack Coughlan, 23, is accused of killing Jamie Collins, 21, in the garden of their home in Filton, South Gloucestershire on April 8.
Bristol Crown Court heard that Coughlan was dressed in all black, wearing a mask and gloves, as he waited for Mr Collins to return home from the University of the West of England (UWE) Bristol, where both were studying robotics. The jury heard that Coughlan accepts he killed Collins but denies murder.
Attack caught on CCTV
Coughlan left the 21-year-old dying in an alleyway as he cycled away on his housemate's bike before dumping it at a nearby retail park, the court heard. He also bought a change of outfit and disposed of his bloodstained clothes in a pond before returning home at around 9pm. The court was told he then put a pizza in the oven before online gaming with friends.
Adam Vaitilingam KC, prosecuting, told the jury: “A few hours later he decided it was time to call the police and pretend that he had just found his friend’s body in the garden. At about 2am – eight hours later – the defendant called 999. He said that his friend had been stabbed. They told him to do CPR until paramedics arrived and he told them that he was.”
“Shortly afterwards, armed police officers arrived. They saw Jamie’s body in the back garden of the house. They spoke to the defendant. He told them that he had been out, at the park, and he had just come home. He had noticed that the back gate was open so came outside and it was then that he found Jamie lying in the garden.”
The attack was caught on CCTV of the house the students shared.
Prosecution case
Mr Vaitilingam told jurors it was the prosecution’s case that the masked attacker was Coughlan. He said the defendant’s blood had been found on Mr Collins’s bike, and mobile phone analysis matched the killer’s movements captured on CCTV.
The prosecutor also explained that “Zack went from being a witness to a suspect in the murder” as a result of the investigation having clear evidence he was the one that ambushed Mr Collins and cycled away after killing him. Coughlan’s hands were injured, which he attempted to explain by telling people that he had been climbing trees and had fallen and hurt himself.
Background and denial
The jury was told that Coughlan and Mr Collins were both final year students at UWE Bristol and lived together in a house owned by the defendant. Mr Vaitilingam said there had previously been arguments between the pair about paying rent and whether Coughlan was charging too much, but they had been resolved. He explained that the two “hung out together both in person and online”, as well as gamed together, and enjoyed “normal student life”.
The court heard that Coughlan now accepts he had killed Mr Collins and had admitted manslaughter. “We understand that he will say that he had lost control of himself because of things that Jamie had said to him over the previous days and weeks that made him fear for his life,” Mr Vaitilingam said. “And so, because of his fear of Jamie, he had been unable to stop himself from killing him.”
But Mr Vaitilingam argued that the murder was not done by someone losing their self-control. He added: “This was a carefully planned and cold-blooded execution. Someone who has lost control doesn’t plan ahead in the way that he did, dressing up so as to avoid being identified and then waiting for 20 minutes outside an address for their victim to appear.
“Far from being out of control, Zack was very much in control of what he did, and you will see that as we show you his movements in the hours and minutes before he killed Jamie. His actions afterwards, disposing of his clothes, pretending he had been climbing trees so as to explain knife cuts to his hands, coming home and playing online games with his friends, looking at the CCTV app on his phone, trying to deceive the police when he called them at 2am. Those were further acts of someone very much in control.”
Coughlan, of Filton, South Gloucestershire, denies murder. The trial continues.
