A MAN accused of murder is said to have threatened to kill a witness if she spoke to the police.

Olamide Soyege is charged with killing drugs runner Taylor Williams in Shooters Way last August, after allegedly trying to rob the network he worked for.

Soyege, 29, had fled Basingstoke after the incident when he allegedly called a witness, who had been tasked with washing his bloodstained clothes, when he made the threat.

It is claimed by the prosecution that the Dagenham man told the witness he would kill her if she told the police what had happened.

Soyege and co-accused Terence Maccabee had left Kingfisher House after the altercation that led to Taylor Williams's death on August 31, 2019, with Maccabee also sustaining a stab wound.

The pair managed to get to Normanton Road, when two acquaintances who lived there found them.

They went inside, where an ambulance was called by one of the acquaintances.

Prosecutor Sarah Jones QC claimed that meanwhile, Soyege had gone upstairs and changed his clothes, leaving them on the bed with the implication that they should be washed.

But Ms Jones said the next day, when Soyege knew that police were looking for him, he called the acquaintance to ask how the washing had gone, and after apparently being unsatisfied with the answer, allegedly said: "I’m going to go down for this. If you talk I will kill you.”

Soyege and Paige Taylor were later found and arrested in Reading, after claiming that they had gone there to inform a cousin of Maccabee that the 19-year-old had been injured.

But Ms Jones called this assertion "utterly ridiculous", telling the jury that Maccabee himself had admitted that he had no cousin in Reading.

"They get out of Basingstoke as soon as possible, you may think, to get away from the police," she said.

Closing her case on Friday morning, Ms Jones added: "If that is how Soyege is prepared to behave in this room when he is trying to present his best side, if he can attempt to bully, talk, shout, argue, deflect, attack verbally and refuse a polite request to help you [the jury] from a High Court judge, imagine what he is like when he commands the lounge at 4 Kingfisher House.

"He told you he was prepared to lie if he thought it to his advantage. He broke the oath and he thought the admission that he had done so was of no significance.

"He said: ‘As though a trial about a man’s death was just a game of strategy. Sometimes you want to surprise the prosecution.' On other occasions he was capable of arguing that two different accounts were not inconsistent at all. He could see zero contradiction at all. Apparently that’s not misleading."

Referring to Maccabee, Ms Jones said: "Clearly you may have thought [he was] Mr Soyege’s willing apprentice on how to give evidence. The same tactics to avoid answering perfectly straightforward questions [were used]."

Referring to Maccabee's claim when giving evidence that he had no "defensive wounds", Ms Jones said: "No, because you and your colleague were the aggressors."

"If the defendants were telling you the truth, their accounts would agree. They would both be able to say to you that Maccabee didn’t stand up first, it was Soyege, but it was only to defend Maccabee from Taylor Williams.

"Because they can’t agree who wielded the knife, you know their account that Taylor Williams was the aggressor is nonsense. They know whoever killed him was a murderer.

"The lies continue, they’re just different lies.

"They are cowards. Cowards who can’t own up and face the consequences of what they have done.

"They have not shown one iota of sorry for Taylor Williams's death, only for themselves. It is time they owned up."

Both Maccabee and Soyege are accused of murder, robbery and conspiracy to rob. Maccabee was acquitted of possession of a knife in Shooters Way after the judge deemed that he had no case to answer. Meanwhile, Soyege still stands accused of that charge.

Maccabee is also accused of having a knife in Bermuda Park, Popley, earlier that evening.

Paige Taylor is not accused of murder, but does stand trial charged with robbery and conspiracy to rob.

The trio deny all charges. The trial continues.