NIKITTA TRIAL: Police seized 300 CCTV discs to track accused

Carl Whant, 27, of no fixed abode, is on trial at Newport Crown Court charged with murdering Nikitta Grender, child destruction, rape and arson. He denies all the charges.

Giving evidence yesterday, Detective Sergeant Neil Passmore said officers visited around 200 shops and businesses in the early stages of the investigation, initially to establish the movements of Whant, Miss Grender’s boyfriend Ryan Mayes and others they were out with on the evening of February 5 when the 19-year-old was killed.

He said after Whant told officers he left a house party in Corelli Street to go to his nan’s house, the focus shifted towards establishing his movements.

Around 40 businesses and shops along the route Whant claimed to have taken were visited, but the court heard that footage from a camera on the Old Green Roundabout and a garage on Queenshill, which was said to have an “excellent view” of the road, was not seized.

Jury members heard that footage of a camera on the Old Green Roundabout which gave a ‘birdseye’ view of the roundabout was seized, but footage from a lower camera was only taken for the time when the group was still in town.

Police identified a vehicle matching Whant’s Ford Focus on CCTV from Chepstow Road, driving away from the city centre and not in the direction of his nan’s house.

DS Passmore said CCTV footage from premises along Chepstow Road, which they believed showed Whant’s car, was seized and passed on to the Transport Research Laboratory for analysis, to see if they could identify a vehicle they believed to be Whant’s.

Andrew Wooler, from the Transport Research Laboratory, said it is standard practice for them to ask officers to send them CCTV footage ranked from poorest quality to highest for them to analyse to determine the identity of a vehicle.

A reconstruction of the CCTV footage was carried out in July last year, using three silver Ford Focus cars, including the one Whant had been driving, which Simon Hurr from Ford told the court was a pre-facelift mark one Ford Focus in moondust silver.

Mr Wooler and his colleague Matthew Cass, carried out the reconstruction with Mr Cass, not knowing which car had been seized by police.

Mr Cass then returned to the lab to see if he could match any of the vehicles from the reconstruction with the original CCTV served by the police.

Garage owner Alan Stone told the court the vehicle was a courtesy car loaned to Whant’s employer Anglian Windows while a van was fixed.

He said the vehicle was vacuumed and given a wipe over, but not fully valeted before being handed over to Whant.

EVIDENCE: Three of the CCTV images of Carl Whant’s car which police collated, including images taken from inside shops, bottom.