ANNAN man Paul Taylor died during a late-night altercation as Cumberland Infirmary security guard Jack Crawley was stealing his car, a court heard.

For about two hours, a Carlisle Crown Court jury listened to the 20-year-old defendant as he gave his account of the circumstances that led to the death of 56-year-old Mr Taylor in October 2023.

Crawley admits manslaughter but denies murder.

Under questioning from his defence KC Toby Hedworth, the defendant described his background, saying he was in his early teens when he transferred to a school in Wigton.

He got in with a “bad crowd” and began using drugs, he said.

“Did you get involved in what might be called the drugs world?” asked Mr Hedworth. Crawley said he did. “They started advertising the lifestyle to me; I thought it was cool at the time.

“I started getting into it for the money; into cocaine. It was a few months before my 14th birthday.”

Crawley said he accrued a “significant debt.”

He recounted an occasion when he stole drugs and cash from an address where there was a party going on and this led to him being “in debt” to a Cumbria based crime gang.

The debt was for around £5,000, he said.

Crawley said: “They just made it up as they we went along… It’s something you can’t escape from. They started getting me to take things, packages, to other people."

“Were there threats made to you?” asked Mr Hedworth.

Crawley replied: “Yes. They threatened to make me disappear.” Threats were also made to his family, he said. Crawley said he had moved away from Carlisle to Appleby for a while to avoid the gang who were threatening him.

He found a job with at a leisure centre there.

Crawley continued: “It didn’t last. I’m pretty sure that somebody told them where I was living.” He found himself having to work for the gang again and he returned to Carlisle, moving in with his mother.

Asked about the things he had to do, Crawley said it involved “taxing,” or stealing from other criminals. Moving on to the death of Mr Taylor, Mr Hedworth asked Crawley about his contact with Paul Taylor.

He said he knew him for three or four years.

They met through the gay dating app Grindr, which Crawley used to find customers for the drugs he sold, said Crawley. The defendant described himself as bisexual, saying he had engaged in sexual activities with Mr Taylor.

He would meet the former soldier, who worked as a catering manager at The Cumberland Infirmary, to sell him drugs and for sexual encounters, he said.

Crawley said he was ordered to break into a "cannabis farm" that had been set up in a barn conversion and he messaged Mr Taylor on October 17 last year because he had formed the idea of stealing his car.

They agreed to meet at Prior Rigg Lane, on the western edge of Carlisle, a remote area where he would meet people sell drugs.

Recalling that encounter, Crawley told the jury he saw Mr Taylor (pictured below) standing beside his parked car. “He raised his hand to greet me,” he said. Asked what he did next, Crawley said: “I punched him in the face.”

(Image: Cumbria Police photo)

The blow knocked Mr Taylor to the ground, at which point Crawley ran towards his car, which had its engine switched on.

It was as Mr Taylor caught up with him and grabbed his arm that he punched him again, continued Crawley. “He fell and tripped over his own feet,” said Crawley.

“He fell to the side of the car and then bounced on to the floor.” Mr Hedworth asked the defendant what he meant by “the floor.”

The defendant replied: “The concrete.”

He said Mr Taylor began making “snorting” sounds while on the floor. Crawley recalled freezing, and staring at the sky but then knelt down beside Mr Taylor. "I started getting really cold and hot, and sweating."

He gave Mr Taylor CPR but he did not respond, he said. There was blood on the ground. “I checked his pulse and he didn’t have one,” said the defendant.

“What did you believe was his condition?” asked Mr Hedworth. Crawley answered: “I think he was dead. He didn’t have a pulse.”

Crawley said he panicked.

At first he was going to drive away but then he decided he could not leave Mr Taylor’s body where it lay. So he lifted it into the car’s boot and then ran home, where he smoked weed.

“My hands were shaking; I didn’t know what to do,” he said.

He then returned to the Corsa and used water he found in the car's boot to wash blood away on the ground. He got into the car and started driving, thinking he might take the body to the sea but he could not find the coast.

He had left his spectacles at home and had trouble seeing, he said.

Crawley then described taking Mr Taylor’s body to Finglandrigg Nature Reserve, a place he had visited during his childhood. He used charcoal, he said, to try to burn the body.

“I just wanted it over,” he said.

He said he hoped that the body would “turn to ashes.”

Crawley told the jury he used a “mallet hammer” to hit the body, hoping that it would “crumb up” like burned wood. “I thought his body would crumb up but his body wasn’t doing anything," he said.

“It didn’t work. I couldn’t stand the smell anymore; I kept being sick. I kept passing out of consciousness.”

Crawley said he had then dragged Mr Taylor’s body to some bushes nearby before driving away. He never went back to the area.

Mr Hedworth referred Crawley to comments he allegedly made while being driven back to Carlisle after crashing Mr Taylor's Vauxhall car – comments about drug dealers, the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and a man dying.

This happened on October 19 last year, the day after Mr Taylor died. Crawley said that his actual comment that day was: "A man has died because of drug dealers as bad as Jeffrey Dahmer.

"It was terrible. It would be good if they were gone; it would be a better world without them. They're a bunch of rats."

Crawley added: "Mr Taylor was not a drug dealer; he bought a bit of weed off me sometimes."

"Had Mr Taylor ever done anything to harm you at all?" asked Mr Hedworth. "No," replied Crawley. At the start of his evidence, Crawley told the court that he did not intend to kill or cause serious harm to Mr Taylor.

Of his alleged attempt to murder a man in York several weeks after Mr Taylor died, Crawley said he acted in self-defence after his accuser threatened him with a flick knife.

Crawley’s co-defendant Marcus Goodfellow, 20, who also worked at Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary as a security guard, denies assisting an offender, Crawley, by helping to dispose of Mr Taylor’s car while knowing that he had committed an arrestable offence.

He has told police that he knew only that Crawley wanted to pass on a car to a friend in Appleby but not why.

Crawley, of Sheehan Crescent, Carlisle, remains remanded in custody while Goodfellow, of Greystone Road, Carlisle, has been given bail during the trial. Crawley will face cross examination by the prosecution today.