A man on trial for shooting a businessman during a botched burglary has claimed he was at Toys R Us on the night of the killing.
Kevin Downton is one of three men facing a murder charge after Guy Hedger was shot dead in front of his husband at their home in rural Hampshire in April.
Prosecutors say he and Jason Baccus and Scott Keeping carried out the raid in which Mr Hedger was gunned down in his bedroom as he tried to help thieves open a safe.
Kevin Downton, pictured (left) in a court sketch, said he went to Toys R Us on the night he is accused of killing businessman Guy Hedger (right)
Winchester Crown Court was told today that Downton, 40, said to police after the shooting: ‘I have no involvement in that address and I have no involvement in that murder.’
Downton told police earlier that evening he had been shopping at Toys R Us in Poole to buy a birthday present for his daughter.
He said he visited ‘two or three friends’ on his way home, but when asked by police for details, Downton replied: ‘I do not wish to discuss my friends with you, just because of the nature of this, I do not wish to implicate anyone.
‘I see how serious it is, I do not like being involved in this and I do not think they would like to be as well.’
When asked if he had discharged a firearm at the address and shot Mr Hedger, he replied: ‘No.’
The alleged murder happened during a break-in at Mr Hedger’s rural home in Hampshire
He said that he could not remember what time he returned home, but had checked the cost of watching a boxing match online but had found it too expensive to watch.
Downton and co-defendants Baccus, 42, and Keeping, 44, both of Bournemouth, all deny murder.
Helen Keeping, 40, from Poole, denies two charges of assisting an offender relating to Baccus by allegedly disposing of stolen property and fellow defendant Keeping by allegedly providing him with a false alibi and disposing of stolen property.
The three male defendants also pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated burglary and possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear or violence.
Baccus and Downton admit one charge of burglary of industrial premises in Verwood on the same day as the Castlewood incident, but deny another offence of burglary in the same area.
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