Teenage girl ‘swore at gay man after kicking his head’

A TEENAGE girl swore at a gay man after stamping on him and kicking him in the head as he lay unconscious on the ground, a court heard yesterday.

Ruby Thomas, 18, called Ian Baynham a “d***head” and said “f*** you” to him as blood poured from his head, said fellow teenager Jamie Devlin.

Devlin told the Old Bailey the victim had earlier told Thomas, who had been flirting with random men: “No, I don’t want to sleep with you.”

Thomas is accused of taking part in the attack in September last year on Ian Baynham, 62, in Trafalgar Square which resulted in his death 18 days later.

It is alleged he was subjected to homophobic taunts before being knocked to the ground, then kicked and stamped on “like a scene from Clockwork Orange”.

Devlin, who had gone out to meet Thomas and other youths that night, said she had seemed “happy” but Rachel Burke, another girl there, was “drunker than Ruby”.

He said Thomas started kicking the victim “quite hard” in the leg after he said he did not want to sleep with her.

Devlin, 18, said after the man moved away she kicked the victim’s friend in the “private parts”.

Baynham then grabbed Burke by the hair and slapped her round the face, making her fall to the floor, the court heard.

Another youth, Joel Alexander, came up and hit the victim in the face with a clenched fist, and he fell back on to the ground and began making a “snoring” noise, said Devlin. “I saw Ruby stamp on his stomach twice, I’d say quite a hard force.”

Devlin said the victim did not react and appeared to be unconscious. He said he ran over to pull Thomas away. “She walked around to the right side of him and kicked him in the right side of the head, twice,” he said.

Thomas struggled as Devlin tried to move her away, he said. The witness told the court he saw “quite a lot” of blood coming from the victim’s ear, nose and mouth.

He said the next day Burke contacted him on Facebook.

“She asked what happened, she couldn’t remember,” he said.

Joel Alexander, 19, of Thornton Heath, south London, Rachel Burke, 18, of Three Oaks, East Sussex, and Ruby Thomas, 18, of Lichfield, Staffs, deny manslaughter.

The trial was adjourned until today.

Earlier this week Brian Altman, prosecuting, told the jury that Trafalgar Square had been the scene of a “despicable incident” during which Baynham was “brutally attacked”.

He said: “One onlooker likened the scene of violence to the film A Clockwork Orange.

“The story of this case is of an all too familiar and depressing tale of drunken, loutish behaviour.

“Two of these defendants are teenage girls. Fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol, they confronted Mr Baynham with abuse. Together with Joel Alexander, they jointly participated in a violent attack on a defenceless man in public.”

Altman said Thomas was “off her face” with drink and had been flirting with men.

Another witness allegedly overheard the group earlier talking about two other men who walked past them holding hands.

One of the females said “We can do them” and their male friend replied “Of course we can”, said Altman.