A witness has said the “grey and jittery” murder accused confessed he had broken a baseball bat by striking Steven Donaldson.
The incident had happened after Steven Dickie and Callum Davidson stepped into an argument between their female co-accused, Tasmin Glass, and her Arbroath ex-boyfriend Mr Donaldson at a Kirriemuir children’s playpark.
It is alleged Dickie then took a bent kitchen knife from a coat pocket shortly before Davidson went back to the Peter Pan park to look for pieces of the broken bat.
Dickie and Davidson arrived back at Davidson’s house around 1am on June 7, where Davidson’s partner described the men as “worried” and “jumpy”. Dickie, Davidson and Glass all deny murdering Mr Donaldson on June 7 last year.
Giving evidence on the fifth day of the Kirriemuir murder trial, Claire Ogston said she thought Davidson and Dickie had “maybe beaten up” Mr Donaldson after telling the court Glass had asked her then-boyfriend Dickie to “deal with” a situation earlier that evening. It followed an angry phone call from Mr Donaldson concerning money Glass was due him.
Asked by advocate depute Ashley Edwards about the events of the early hours, Miss Ogston, who has a 12-week-old daughter with Davidson, said he had woken her up.
“He needed to speak to me about something, that they had gone up the hill to meet that boy and I just kind of shut him down. I didn’t want to know,” said Miss Ogston.
Asked how Davidson seemed, she said: “Quite quiet, quite jittery.” The witness told the court Dickie was in the shower of her house at that point but then came out.
“Steven was a very grey colour and very sort of quiet,” she said.
They were then alone in the kitchen and Miss Ogston said: “He told me that he had hit Steven Donaldson with the baseball bat.”
The advocate depute asked: “Did he say anything about Kirrie Hill?”
“Just that that’s where they met him,” replied the witness.
Miss Ogston said Dickie told her Donaldson and Glass were “having an argument, it got quite heated and that’s when he went over and intervened.
“He said Steven Donaldson had tried to get away from him and that he had hit him with the bat,” adding that she was told it had broken into pieces. She said Dickie then went into the pocket of a jacket that was hanging at the door and pulled out one of her kitchen knives, which was bent, and put it on the counter.
Miss Ogston then overheard a telephone conversation between Dickie and Davidson saying that “Callum needed to look for the parts of the bat which had been broken”.
The trial continues.
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