It was an attack that shocked the nation when it happened, and now the story of what happened when two teenage boys from South Bristol were fatally wounded in their own street is finally beginning to be told in court.
The trial of five people, each accused of the double murder of Max Dixon, 16, and Mason Rist, 15, has been taking place in Court 1 at Bristol Crown Court this week, after starting last week.
The trial is taking place with unusual provisions put in place, given the ages of the defendants, and it is one of the biggest and most logistically complex cases heard at the court for a number of years.
Bristol Live and the Press Association has been following almost all of the case that has been heard, and so far that has entirely been the prosecution laying out its case. This is everything we can report on the case.
Who is in the dock?
Antony Snook, 45, from Hartcliffe in South Bristol, is in the dock alongside four teenagers. Since being charged, the eldest of those teenagers has turned 18, and his identity could be reported from the first day of the trial. He is Riley Tolliver.
Three other teenagers, aged 17, 16 and 15, cannot legally be named because of they are under 18.
What are the charges and pleas?
All five have been charged with two counts of murder – the murders of Max Dixon and Mason Rist. Antony Snook, Riley Tolliver and the 16-year-old have pleaded ‘not guilty’ to both charges.
The 17-year-old has also pleaded ‘not guilty’ to both charges, but has admitted the manslaughter of Max Dixon.
The 15-year-old charged has pleaded guilty to the murder of Mason Rist, but ‘not guilty’ to the murder of Max Dixon.
What happened in the attack?
The jury has been shown detailed CCTV images and films from a number of cameras that are on homes in Ilminster Avenue, a road in Knowle West. From those snippets, the prosecution has been able to piece together the movements of Max and Mason, a car and five people inside it, as it drove down Ilminster Avenue.
The videos shown in court revealed Max, who lived around the corner, called for Mason at just after 11.15pm on the night of Saturday, January 27, and the pair left Mason’s home and turned left, heading south east in Ilminster Avenue towards the shops and a takeaway at the end of the street, in Newquay Road.
Almost immediately, a car passed them heading in the same direction. The prosecution said it was an Audi Q2 driven by Antony Snook. It turned around further down the road, and began driving towards Max and Mason.
The car stopped in the road and four teenagers jumped out, and confronted the two teenagers. Max and Mason began running back the way they came, pursued by the four, who CCTV picked up were carrying what the prosecution said were ‘fearsome weapons’.
Mason crossed the road but was caught and stabbed. The CCTV camera from his own house filmed him being attacked three times by three different teenagers. Max had managed to run further along Ilminster Avenue, for a time out of view from CCTV, but he suffered a single stab wound.
The four teenagers jumped back into the car and drove off, passing Mason lying on the pavement. The entire length of time the four teenagers were out of the vehicle was just 33 seconds. Mason got up and attempted to cross the road back to his home, but collapsed halfway across. Max ran for cover down the side of a house, where he was found collapsed too.
What were Max and Mason’s injuries?
Mason suffered two serious stab wounds, which were described in court as ‘unsurvivable’. Max suffered a single stab wound in his back, but tragically both died less than two hours later in hospital, the court was told.
What was the motive for the attack?
A lot of the prosecution case to the jury so far has centred around events about an hour before the attack, which took place at a house in Hartcliffe.
The jury was told of a long-standing ‘postcode war’ between Hartcliffe – in BS13 – and Knowle West, in BS4. A house in Hartcliffe was attacked just after 10pm that night. A CCTV camera on the front of that house picked up three machete-wielding masked youths threatening the house and throwing bricks at the windows, smashing them all. A woman in the house was injured in the attack.
An hour later, a car driven by Antony Snook left the house and headed into Knowle West, after picking up a couple of passengers. The prosecution said it was a revenge attack, although the court heard everyone agrees that Max Dixon and Mason Rist had ‘absolutely nothing to do with the earlier attack whatsoever’. It appears the pair were targeted in a case of mistaken identity.
What is the defence?
All five are currently innocent of the charges to which they have pleaded ‘not guilty’ – until proven otherwise, and it is for the prosecution to prove to the jury beyond reasonable doubt that all five defendants are guilty of both murders – effectively the equivalent of 10 murders in total.
One of those charges has already been admitted – the 15-year-old who has pleaded guilty to the murder of Mason Rist. CCTV showed him plunging a long machete-like knife into Mason’s side.
The 17-year-old’s guilty plea to the manslaughter of Max Dixon means he admits causing a fatal injury, but denies the intention to kill that is needed for a guilty verdict to murder.
None of the five in the dock deny being there in Ilminster Avenue or deny being involved in the incident, just that they contend their actions that evening did not amount to guilt to two murders each.
The jury has so far only heard the prosecution. Prosecuting, Ray Tully took two days to open their case, and they have since followed it up with detailed examination of the attack itself, the evidence of what the defendants did both before and after the case and, late this week, the answers given by the only one of the five defendants who spoke during police questioning after their arrest – Antony Snook.
From the pleas so far, the prosecution summary of the case to the jury and from Antony Snook’s police interviews, the jury has been able to understand in part what the defence is.
The prosecution barrister Ray Tully told the jury that the key aspect of the prosecution’s case is that all five acted together as a team to attack and kill Max and Mason, therefore are guilty of murder under joint enterprise rules. These state that someone taking part in an attack is guilty of murder even if they were not the ones who inflicted the fatal blow, or didn’t directly contribute to the death.
All five defendants are represented individually, and the ‘not guilty’ pleas indicate they reject that collaborative joint enterprise claim.
The CCTV evidence showed Riley Tolliver, the 18-year-old in the dock, carried a large bat or stick with him to the attack, but not a knife or machete, and although the prosecution said the CCTV showed Tolliver approaching and attacking a stricken Mason Rist as he lay on the pavement after the first knife wound he received from the 15-year-old, he didn’t physically kill him.
The prosecution has also explained to the jury that the 15-year-old’s guilty plea to murdering Mason, but ‘not guilty’ to murdering Max indicates that he is denying being responsible for Max’s murder too.
Ray Tully, prosecuting, said it is the Crown’s case that all four teenagers chased the boys together, knowing they were armed with weapons, and it was just ‘pure chance’ which chased which of the two victims as they ran away and split up, and which landed the actual blows.
The CCTV showed Antony Snook never even got out of his car, but the prosecution say he is ‘as guilty as the others’ because he drove them to search Knowle West that night, and ‘acted as their getaway driver’. “Without his wheels,” the prosecution said, the fatal events would never have happened.
In police interview, Snook’s defence when questioned was that he thought he was taking a group of young people to stay the night somewhere safer after the attack on a house in Hartcliffe, he didn’t know they had large weapons with them, and had no idea their plan was to attack two youths in Knowle West. He told police he didn’t know any of those in his car, apart from one teenager, and didn’t even know how many were in his car.
What are the special circumstances?
The jury has been told the case could last eight weeks, although the barristers involved hope it may be sooner than that. The court is only sitting between, roughly, 11am and 3pm each day, with an hour break for lunch and evidence only heard in sessions of little more than an hour each time.
The jury has been told the later start and early finish – trials normally run from 10am to 5pm – is mainly because the four defendants are being held on parole in secure young offenders’ institutions a long way from Bristol – some three or more hours’ drive away – and would not be able to be brought to court any earlier. In fact, a number of court days have not started until midday or later, because of the late arrivals of those due into the dock.
The other factor is that, as well as the age of all four of the defendants, they have been diagnosed with cognitive issues, and have an advisor in the dock with them to help them understand the sometimes very complicated proceedings. The early finish at 3pm or thereafter, each day, gives their defence teams the chance to catch up and explain proceedings as they go, the jury has been told.
What happens next?
The court is not sitting on Monday, but will resume on Tuesday with more from the prosecution case. In the next week or so, the court is expecting the prosecution will rest its case and it will be the turn of the defence – or five defence teams in particular – to begin their cases.