No hint of knife used in fatal Cambridge attack, court told
Neil Lakhani was found dead inside his home in September last year
No evidence a knife had been used to kill a Cambridge man inside his flat was found at the time of his death, a court has heard.
Neil Lakhani was found dead at his home in Greengates Court off Histon Road in Cambridge in September last year.
Jonathon Austin - wearing a black collared shirt with beige trousers from the secure dock - denies murder.
Charles Myatt, prosecuting, told jurors at the crown court trial at Huntingdon Law Courts that Mr Lakhani was found inside a property with bleeding injuries, including wounds to his nose and face.
Mr Myatt - who said Mr Lakhani was pronounced dead at the scene - told the court Austin opened the door to police after a 999 call was made, before he was arrested in connection with Mr Lakhani's death.
The barrister told the court that forensic scientist Neil Wilson, called in by police to attend the scene, said DNA evidence found under Mr Lakhani's fingernails on both of his hands shows "extremely strong support" that this was a match with Austin.
Mr Wilson said it's not possible to analyse one person's entire DNA, so "we look at 17 different areas known to be highly variable between individuals."
'Drag mark' found on floor
He told jurors there is a "very small chance that two unrelated people could have the same DNA profile" and said that the DNA profiles for both Mr Lakhani and Austin were different to one another.
He said the amount of DNA that is transferred from one person to a different item depends on how and for how long something is touched for.
"A brief touch of an item, expectations would be low, but if I handled an area repeatedly, expectations would be higher," Mr Wilson told jurors.
The court heard Mr Wilson found Mr Lakhani in the corner of a living room close to a wall.
He said he saw blood stains and an "apparent drag mark (of blood) on the floor", caused as Mr Lakhani was moved from the corner to a "more central position".
Mr Wilson also noticed small spots of blood and irregular blood stain shapes, which he told the court is "expected if blood has come from an airway".
He told the jury blood stains on a wall were "travelling downwards which was cast off from a moving object, (which) could be from somebody's hand or a weapon carried".
'No patterns' to show knife used in attack
Mr Wilson said a kitchen knife with a non-serrated blade and a wooden handle was examined for blood stains.
He recalled the handle and the cutting edge of the knife being blood-stained, but "no patterns were seen to indicate the knife had been used to injure someone."
Asked by Mr Myatt what you would see if a knife was used on someone, Mr Wilson said a typical pattern "would be blood stains along the knife blade mixed with fatty material".
But he added that "we don't always get a characteristic pattern even if a knife is used to injure or stab."
Questions around 'drag mark'
Nichola Cafferkey, defence counsel, asked Mr Wilson about whether there was "a footprint" on an area of wet blood where a drag mark was found on the floor of Mr Lakhani's flat.
Mr Wilson agreed and said this was "footwear marks from the sole of a shoe, leaving a print behind; medical personnel had been at the scene."
Ms Cafferkey told the court about a rainbow coloured lighter, which prosecutors claimed was "heavily blood-stained" after coming into contact with wet blood.
Mr Myatt said Mr Wilson had examined the lighter, and found that male DNA obtained that did not belong to Mr Lakhani was a match for Austin.
She claimed by the time the lighter came to be tested at a laboratory, "any blood had dried", something Mr Wilson agreed with.
Ms Cafferkey told jurors that five out of 14 blood samples were analysed by forensic teams, with "no information to show it originated from an individual like Mr Lakhani or Mr Austin".
The trial continues.