A jury has been told that a teenager accused of murder lured his victim to a marina, beat and kicked him, then pushed him into icy waters.
Layton Randle, 19, from Oakfield Terrace Road in Plymouth, is accused of murdering 24-year-old Drew Perham. Drew's body was discovered at King Point Marina in Millbay on January 25 by police divers.
The jury was told Randle had already offered a guilty plea to the charge of manslaughter.
Opening the case for the Crown, prosecutor Dan Pawson-Pounds KC told Plymouth Crown Court that Drew's mobile phone and watch were found by a police officer at 1.30am that morning on a pontoon at the marina. He said the officer was at the scene because police had received a call around midnight saying Randle had beaten Drew at the docks and pushed him into the water, and he had not been seen again.
Mr Pawson-Pounds described it as a "dark, cold, wet and windy January night" and said police continued to search the area. Drew's trainers were found in the water at around 6am, and police divers eventually discovered Drew's body at 11.30am on January 25 on the sea bed of the marina.
The jury was told a post-mortem confirmed Drew died by drowning. CCTV footage of Drew and Randle suggested Drew had entered the water between 1.33am and 1.35am, meaning he had been in the water for around 34 hours by the time his body was found.
The court heard Randle had been out in Plymouth with a number of friends and acquaintances. He had booked a room at the New Continental Hotel for himself and a friend, Harry Griffiths, to stay at before a night out in the city. On Friday evening, Randle encountered Drew at The Depo club in Union Street and spent the next few hours with him.
Mr Pawson-Pounds told the jury that in the hours before and after Drew's body was discovered, Randle had told several people that police were "going to get him" because he had argued with someone called Drew and had done things to him as a result of that argument.
The jury heard Randle had told people at a party at an apartment in Southside Street, Barbican, between 4.19am and 9.20am on January 25. He had invited himself to the property. The prosecutor said there were "drugs and alcohol circulating at that party". Randle told people he had argued with Drew because he had "done something that had properly annoyed him". He also showed people a picture of Drew on his phone, taken from a social media account.
The court was told Randle claimed he had "beaten the s*** out of Drew, punching him, then kicking him on the floor and then pushing him into water" before saying this happened by rocks at the parking spaces by Millbay docks. Mr Pawson-Pounds KC said Randle described Drew as a "gay lad" and mentioned
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