Schoolboy, 15, accused of beating an elderly dog walker to death tells court he pushed him to the ground to protect his 13-year-old co-defendant

A 15-year-old boy accused of beating an elderly dog walker to death told a jury today he pushed the pensioner to the ground to protect his 13-year-old co-defendant.

The teenager is charged with the murder of Bhim Kohli, 80, who died 24 hours after he was allegedly punched and kicked repeatedly last September.

Jurors have previously heard the youth went on to send a friend two ‘laughing’ emojis and said he was ‘chilling’ after reading that the retired factory worker had been critically injured.

A court heard Mr Kohli was also racially abused and struck around the face with a ‘slider' sandal while on his knees as part of the ‘act of pure violence' – which was filmed on a mobile phone by a female co-defendant of the boy, who was 14 at the time of the incident.

The girl, who was 12 at the time of Mr Kohli’s death, is charged with manslaughter after prosecutors said she ‘encouraged' the alleged fatal assault. Neither defendant can be identified because of their age.

This afternoon the boy said he approached Mr Kohli in a park just yards from the octogenarian’s home after his female co-accused told him the pensioner ‘carries a knife’.

The boy approached Mr Kohli telling the jury: ‘I just wanted to talk to him to see if he had a knife,’ but he said his enquiries were ignored.

Then, as he stepped away, the boy said his slider came off his foot and Mr Kohli grabbed it.

A ‘tug of war’ then broke out between them during which, he said, the grandfather fell to his knees.

Leicester Crown Court heard that having recovered his slider, the teenager then slapped Mr Kohli around the face with it, a moment that was caught on video by his co-defendant.

Asked by his barrister Balraj Bhatia KC why he had done it, he replied: ‘When I got the slider back it was the first thing that popped into my head.’

But he denied being angry and claimed he was upset for having done it.

The teenager, wearing a white shirt, black tie and black trousers, was watched as he gave his evidence by his tearful mother who sat in the public gallery.

In another video clip, Mr Kohli was seen walking towards the boy, who had by then moved to a bench to ‘chill’.

The boy said he thought the victim was ‘going to push or hit’ his co-defendant, adding: ‘I ran at him with my arms out and pushed him.’

The youngster said that in pushing Mr Kohli his momentum had caused him to fall onto the 80-year-old’s rib cage.

He said he was aware the pensioner’s head had hit the ground and bounced back up.

He denied kicking or punching Mr Kohli after this but admitted that he thought he was dead and asked a young woman in the park to call an ambulance.

Asked why he had done this, he replied: ‘I did not know if he was OK and did not want to be there.’

Before the attack on Mr Kohli, jurors heard the boy had taken a balaclava out of his Gucci man-bag and put it on.

Asked by Mr Bhatia why he had a balaclava or ‘bally’ as he called it, the boy replied: ‘Fashion’, but denied he had donned the headwear because he was ‘going to do something bad’.

The court has previously seen a series of CCTV recordings taken before and after the assault on Mr Kohli in Leicester’s Franklin Park, which took place at around 6.30pm on September 1.

They showed the pensioner walking into the park with his pet dog Rocky, before the boy and girl, enter three minutes later with another boy and two girls.

Jurors also viewed three separate short video clips found on the accused girl's phone – firstly showing Mr Kohli being struck around the face by the boy with his slider, then walking and shouting, before a final clip showed him lying still on the ground.

Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu KC has told the court that in between the last two clips, the boy launched an ‘intense' attack that led to Mr Kohli – who was found lying in agony in the park by his son and daughter – suffering fatal injuries.

The boy and girl were subsequently arrested and charged with murder and manslaughter respectively – which they deny.

A post-mortem examination revealed the cause of Mr Kohli's death to be a neck injury ‘causing trauma to the spinal cord’, with the OAP also suffering broken ribs, which Mr Sandhu said were consistent with him being punched and kicked repeatedly.

Mr Sandhu had previously taken jurors through the boy’s mobile phone activity in the day after the alleged assault when the pensioner was still fighting for his life. It included dozens of text and social media messages, calls and internet searches, including one on ‘Franklin Park news’ and another seconds later for ‘Adele tickets’.

Quizzed two hours later by another friend if he was ‘s****** it', the boy replied with two ‘laughing' emojis and the message ‘Nah, chilling bro'.

Today the jury heard the boy back-track on several claims made in an initial statement, including that Mr Kohli had become aggressive and that he had hit him after pushing him over.

Mr Bhatia asked him: ‘Do you wish you had behaved differently that day?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘Did you want to hurt him?’ ‘No,’ he replied.