Witness denies using Big Ben statue to kill man

A woman was asked in court if she killed a man using a Big Ben figurine while his friend, who is on trial for his murder, lay unconscious.

Arvydas Maliusis, 38, of Recorder Road, Norwich, is accused of murdering 39-year-old Ilja Akatjevas at a flat in Mill House on College Street, Ipswich on 22 December.

Akatjevas was found dead with fatal head, neck and face injuries the next day by the defendant and a woman who had been with them both the night before.

The prosecution have told the jury that Maliusis had beaten him to death, but at Ipswich Crown Court on Wednesday, the defence queried if the woman had actually killed Akatjevas.

Stephen Rose KC, for the defendant, questioned whether the woman had attacked Akatjevas after Akatjevas had knocked Maliusis out.

"Did you put Arvydas' coat on? Did you hit Ilja with that Big Ben statue?" he asked.

The woman answered "No" to both questions.

Rose continued: "I suggest Arvydas regained consciousness and stood up and then put on his dark jacket and his white coat and you left the flat together."

She gave evidence from behind a screen which shielded her from the defendant's view.

At an earlier hearing, the court had been told by the woman that Maliusis, who denies murder, had delivered a barrage of "hard and fast" punches to Akatjevas.

She said he had become "enraged" after Akatjevas pushed her to the ground.

Maliusis had punched him, she said, following an argument during a night of drinking litre bottles of vodka.

"I did have a thought something might happen to me. It was frightening for me," she told the jury.

She accepted that she and Maliusis had left the flat after the attack, not believing the victim was dead, before returning to her Ipswich home and having sex.

Like Maliusis, she was initially arrested on suspicion of murder before being released. In court, she denied hitting or killing the alleged victim.

But Rose questioned why she would have remained with Maliusis for the rest of the night and into the morning if she had witnessed him kill Akatjevas.

"If you had seen Arvydas repeatedly punching Ilja, causing him to have all that blood over him, why did you walk away with him?", he asked.

"Why not ditch the man you had seen violently punch Ilja? Surely, your instinct would have been to get away?"

The witness explained she had felt "sorry" for the defendant because "he was from Norwich" and had "nowhere to sleep".

On the morning of 23 December, the jury heard, both Maliusis and the woman returned to Arvydas's flat, where they found him dead.

Maliusis called Suffolk Police before officers attended the scene and arrested him at 11:56 GMT.

The trial continues.

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