Overview
- Jurors heard opening statements Tuesday at the Old Bailey, and the trial is expected to last five weeks.
- Marcus La-Croix, 38, from Hackney, denies murdering 17-year-old Tanesha Melbourne-Blake and denies possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.
- Prosecutors say the shooting was a planned ride-out tied to a feud between local groups known as Wood Green Mob and Northumberland Park Killers, and they told jurors Tanesha may not have been the intended target.
- Witnesses, including her boyfriend Lumear Small, described a car pulling up, a window lowering, a hand appearing, and three bright sparks with a “pap, pap, pap” sound consistent with gunfire.
- Forensic and medical evidence pointed to a self-loading Browning-style pistol and recorded that Tanesha, who had no criminal involvement, was pronounced dead at 10:43pm after catastrophic abdominal bleeding, following a widely shared video of La-Croix’s beating at a Farringdon diner a day earlier.