Jamie Coggins told a court he played FIFA, went to see a girl and planned to go to a “little bistro for some food” following the shooting
A murder suspect “got rid” of his phone the day after the fatal shooting because he had fears about drug sale messages, a court heard. Jamie Coggins, 28, is one of four men accused of the murder of Nyle Corrigan, who was fatally shot on Boode Croft in Stockbridge Village on November 12 2020.
Three other men – Martin Wilson, 37, Connor Smith, 26, and Anthony Llewellyn, 25 – have gone on trial at Liverpool Crown Court alongside Coggins after being charged with his murder. The four men are also accused of conspiracy to possess a 9mm Glock self-loading pistol with intent to supply, while Smith’s parents – Melanie Smith, 47, and Mark Sharpe, 49 – are accused of assisting an offender.
The crown’s case against the four men is that Wilson and Connor Smith were the gunmen who carried out the shooting but were supported by Coggins and Llewellyn “who were both fully signed up to the plan”. Lead prosecution counsel Richard Wright KC previously told the court: “Together, we say, those four men are all responsible for his murder.”
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Coggins was the first defendant to appear on the witness stand this morning, Friday, November 22 and answered questions from his legal counsel Nick Johnson KC. Coggins told the court that at the time of the shooting he was in Burger Town in Walton with co-defendant Llewellyn.
Mr Johnson asked Coggins about his movements in the hours after the shooting. Asking him first why he was at Reliance House – a Liverpool city centre flat owned by alleged gunman Smith – at 7.36pm, Coggins claimed he was looking for Smith. When asked how he got into the flats without a key fob, Coggins said: “I was friendly with the concierge, he let me in. I walked up and knocked on Connor’s door to see if he was in.”
The court heard he made phone calls to two men around 10 minutes later – Paul Birch and Neil Cook. When asked why he made the calls, Coggins said: “Well Mr Birch I don’t remember what that was about but Mr Cook I can remember. We were looking for Connor. He wasn’t answering his phone. He sometimes went drinking with Neil. I got his number off Anthony and phoned him.”
The court heard later the same night Coggins dropped associate Joshua Donnelly at home before continuing on with Llewellyn. Mr Johnson asked where he went, with Coggins responding: “There’s only a few places I go,” before listing the houses of his mum, aunt and Llewellyn.
Later the same night both Coggins and Llewellyn were back at Reliance House at around 11pm, the court heard. However, this time it was claimed they were in possession of a key fob which the latter used to let them in. Mr Johnson asked Coggins: “Did you or Mr Llewellyn get your hands on the fob?”
Coggins, wearing jeans, a grey quarter zip top and sporting reddish hair on the witness stand, responded: “Anthony got his hands on the fob. Me and Anthony were in my aunt’s…when we went to go we saw a car and thought that was Connor’s pulled next to a grass verge.” He added: “The fob and the key were just there.
“Sometime later Anthony has asked me to go to Connor’s flat to get his shoes and jacket…Anthony sometimes stays there and has a pair of shoes and a jacket. While we were there we played a game of FIFA and I had a few cigarettes.”
During the opening of the case, the prosecution showed the jury CCTV footage of the two men outside Reliance House, with Llewellyn not wearing any footwear. The prosecution said: “A sensible inference we suggest would be that he had lent them to Smith who had discarded his own footwear after the shooting.”
Coggins claims they stayed there for around 40 minutes before he dropped Llewellyn home. He then told the court he went “to get a weed from someone in Corner Brook”, before he made two phone calls to Delta Taxis.
When asked where he was going, Coggins said: “I was phoning a taxi to go and see a girl I was seeing at the time.” And when Mr Johnson asked why he did not drive, Coggins said: “I had been smoking weed…I didn’t fancy the chances of getting pulled.”
The court heard he took a taxi to Elizabeth Road in Huyton to the house of his second cousin, where the girl he was seeing was. Coggins told the court he then took a return taxi back to Barons Hey in the morning because “my car was there from the night before”. When asked what he was doing later that day, he said: “I think I was going to a little bistro to have some food.”
The court heard at 1.33pm he called Llewellyn which was the last outgoing call on his phone. Mr Johnson asked if he got rid of his phone, to which Coggins responded: “I did yeah, because Anthony had phoned Nyle at 1.30pm (the previous day) and then he had been killed.
“I’m thinking police might want to question Anthony and seize his phone. If they seize my phone I don’t want to incriminate myself as I don’t know what I sold. I’m just going to get rid of it in case it happens.” Mr Johnson asked “anything in your phone about Nyle,” with Coggins responding no. He added: “I have sold drugs in the past. I don’t know what I have sold, I have just got rid of it.”
Earlier in proceedings, Coggins told the court that while he was friends with Llewellyn and Smith, he had only met Wilson “a couple of times in passing”. He added he had known the victim Mr Corrigan “for most of my life” and considered him a friend.
When asked by Mr Johnson what he would do in his spare time, Coggins told the court: “Well I would phone my mates, Anthony and Connor, and go for food and then go to a friend’s or my house and have a beer.” He said they would spend time playing and talking about video games, adding he played “about eight to 12 hours a day” and had particular expertise at “FIFA and World of Warcraft”.
On the day of the shooting there were calls between Coggins, Smith and Llewellyn, which Coggins said were social calls and could have “possibly been about video games” as the new FIFA game had recently come out.
During the prosecution’s opening, Mr Wright told the jury that “the origins of the dispute lie with a man called Liam Cohen”. Mr Wright said Mr Cohen also lived on Little Moss Hey with his partner Kayleigh Donnelly and had previously been on good terms with Mr Corrigan but the relationship “had soured” because of an unpaid debt.
The court heard the dispute culminated on November 9 when Mr Corrigan sent Ms Donnelly a message calling her a “cheeky c***”. Mr Wright said the “minor debt” escalated and an “irritated” Mr Cohen had “brought in” distant relative Wilson.
The prosecution said a team of men later gathered around Wilson and went to Mr Corrigan’s house demanding to know where he was. Mr Wright told the court that the group said “Nyle was dead”, and when Ms Corrigan left to go to her granddad’s house they followed her in the car and shouted her brother “should not start something if he wasn’t going to finish it”.
The court heard the following day two gunmen armed with a 9mm Glock handgun waited for Mr Corrigan, riding his electric bike, before they shot him once in the back. Mr Wright previously said: “Whilst two men carried out the physical act of stalking and shooting of Nyle Corrigan, we suggest that the shooters were part of a wider team, a team that was in place to assist them to both carry out the shooting, and then to try to get away with it.”
Coggins, of The Spinney, Stockbridge Village; Llewellyn, formerly of Olivette Way, St Helens; Smith of Midway Road in Huyton; Wilson, of no fixed address, and Melanie Smith and Mark Sharpe, both also of Midway Road, deny the charges before them. The trial before Mr Justice Goose continues.
