MOMENTS after an alleged murderer left a man dying, he told a bystander: “I had to do him, he was selling drugs to my 14-year-old daughter.”

Jeremy Hales was giving evidence at the trial of Sidney Cooper and his brother Charlie Cooper who are accused of stabbing to death Courtney Jones in a driveway in Totton.

The bystander was neighbour Jeremy Hales who had gone to investigate screams next to his garden.

Mr Hales, of Longbridge Close, Totton, told the jury: “There was a lot of shouting coming from the other side of the fence. The noise was getting louder. I decided to go round and sort it out.

“I looked down the driveway and there was a young man laying on his side on the ground. There was a female standing nearby and another screaming down a phone, probably for an ambulance.”

Mr Hales said a man wearing a red shirt, who the prosecution says was Sidney Cooper, walked towards him. “He just said ‘I had to do him, he was selling drugs to my 14-year-old daughter.’ I thought that was a bit strange, he walked past me down towards the road.

“He sounded quite calm, a bit flustered. I thought they had given him a good seeing to.”

Cross-examined by James Newton-Price QC, defending Sidney, Mr Hales agreed Sidney, who is in his mid-20s, was “a little too young to have a 14-year-old daughter”. But Mr Hales added: “Those were his words, no more, no less.”

Paramedic Marc Stimpson said he and colleagues battled to save Mr Jones who had suffered two stab wounds to his chest. Initially he had no pulse but it was revived before being lost again en route to Southampton hospital.

Sidney Cooper, 26, of no fixed abode, and Charlie Cooper, 19, of Ashby Road, Totton, deny the murder of Mr Jones at a property on Salisbury Road, Totton. The trial at Winchester Crown Court continues.