A Royal Navy veteran was run over by his own sports car in a botched burglary that turned into a murder, a court has heard.
Mike Samwell, 35, from Chorlton, a suburb of south Manchester, was crushed by his Audi S3 when he tried to stop a burglar from stealing it earlier this year.
Ryan Gibbons, 29, has admitted burglary and aggravated vehicle taking, but he denies both murder and the alternative, lesser charge of manslaughter. He insists he had no idea he had reversed over Samwell, a claim the crown describes as incredible given that a CCTV camera at least 80 yards away picked up the sound of the victim shouting and also because Samwell was a big man.
“Just imagine reversing backwards over a body … Even if you were panicking, could you possibly miss it? Mike Samwell was 5’11” tall and weighed just under 14 stone,” Alistair Webster QC told Manchester crown court. The prosecutor said Samwell’s presence must have been “glaringly obvious to the person or persons taking the car”.
Like any “sober and rational” person, Gibbons “must have realised that the object he was crushing under the wheels of the car was a human being”, he said.
The jury heard that Samwell, a former submarine officer and nuclear engineer, had enjoyed a pleasant evening with his wife, Jessica, at home in Cranbourne Road on the night of the alleged murder. Before going to bed he had left the keys to his Audi in the kitchen.
At 3am Jessica was woken by a sound similar to bins being moved, followed by a bang. Her husband ran downstairs and while she was ringing the police she heard him shouting: “Oi, oi, no, oi, oi! Oh not the fucking car!”
When she ran outside she saw him still in his underpants under the wheels of the Audi. There were tyre marks on his chest and he was trapped between the front and rear wheels, suggesting the low-slung vehicle had been reversed over the top of him, the court heard.
Samwell was rushed to hospital in an ambulance but died shortly afterwards. There were 39 external injuries to his body, “entirely consistent with him having been run over by the vehicle, dragged across the floor, and with the tyres having gone over him”, Webster said.
Gibbons, meanwhile, had sped off in the car, he said. The next day he went to a hotel in Manchester city centre after his girlfriend, Stacey Hughes, booked him in under a false name. He then escaped to Scotland, but was arrested on 27 April in Glenrothes, Fife.
Two other figures were caught on CCTV running away from the alleged murder, but neither have yet been identified. A BMW alleged to have been driven by Gibbons’ friend, Raymond Davis, was seen 14 seconds behind the Audi, the court heard. An informal neighourhood watch group had spotted the same BMW in a nearby street a few days earlier and logged it as suspicious.
Davis tried to contact Gibbons a few minutes after the alleged murder, mobile phone records show.
It was not a spur-of-the-moment crime, Webster said: “This was not a car at the side of the road, easy to see, casually stolen. This was a high value car, parked out of sight, which could only be stolen by means of a burglary, getting the keys out of the house.”
Jessica Samwell sobbed as she gave evidence to the court behind a curtain. She described rushing downstairs after hearing “the most awful noise” and finding her husband under the car he had bought just a few months previously.
In the dock, Gibbons blinked hard and bowed his head, pressing his skull against the bullet-proof glass as the widow recalled trying to hold Samwell’s hand, desperately hoping he would be ok.
After she had finished answering questions, the judge, Mr Justice William Davis, offered his condolences. “I’m really sorry, “he told her. “I’m merely the judge in this case but I know I speak for everybody when I say how desperately sorry we are.”
Hughes, 28, denies assisting an offender. Davis has admitted a count of burglary, but denies manslaughter and aggravated vehicle taking without consent.
The case continues.