A TEENAGER charged with the murder of a man in a Newport street, told a jury his co-accused boasted to him of kicking the victim.

Shaquille Crosdale said Richard Wallis made the claim in the latter’s house after Jan Jedrzejewski was left lying injured in the street, Newport Crown Court heard yesterday.

Mr Jedrzejewski, 41, was found unconscious in the city’s Keene Street late on January 12 this year.

He died in hospital the following day.

Accused of Mr Jedrzejewski’s murder are: Crosdale and Callum Banton, both 18, and both of Fleetwood Close, Newport; Wallis, aged 43, of Keene Street; and a 17-year-old youth who cannot be named for legal reasons.

All deny the charge.

Cross-examining Crosdale, Paul Lewis QC, defending Wallis, said his claim of going into Wallis’s house was “a barefaced lie.” Crosdale replied: “It was the truth.”

In a police interview read earlier in the trial, Wallis said Crosdale asked to come in to his house and he refused, telling him to "keep running”.

Mr Lewis asked who else heard Wallis “boast to you that he has kicked the man?” Crosdale replied “No-one”.

Crosdale admitted throwing a piece of wood at Mr Jedrzejewski - who was ejected moments earlier from the Cromwell Stores - but denied using it to hit him.

He described Banton and the youth “pushing and shoving” Mr Jedrzejewski down the road, then hearing noises “like dum, dum, dum”. He assumed he had fallen between two vehicles.

Crosdale told the court he could not see what was happening, but saw Banton and the youth move away and walk off.

“I can’t vouch for them on this, but they said the guy was fine,” he said.

He denied Mr Lewis’s suggestions that Banton and the youth were hitting, not pushing Mr Jedrzejewski, and that “all three of you attacked him”.

After the man fell, Crosdale said he heard a loud bang and while running down the road “saw Wallis there”.

Proceeding.

Of Mr Lewis’s suggestion that Wallis had turned the man on his side”, Crosdale said: “If you want to be fooled into believing that, that’s up to you.”