He also denies having a firearm and ammunition with intent to endanger life

He also denies having a firearm and ammunition with intent to endanger life.Yesterday Fearon took the stand to give his version, admitting he felt blame because he “took the little lad there to get killed”. He had been brought from prison, where he is serving a sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracyto burgle Mr Martin’s house with Bark.But he insisted they had not set off to target an “old man’s” house as suggested by the defence. Instead they plannedto check an outbuilding for possible burglary, having heard that “nobody had lived there for 100 years”.They had, he said, been chased by a snarling dog In the dark Barras had clung to his friend in fear “He was crying and clinging on to my shoulder. I don’t think he liked dogs,” said Fearon.Confused by the dark, they had ended up at the main house, he claimed, and, in their fear, accidentally broke a window and climbed in to escape the angry animal.

Once inside they had stumbled in the dark through Mr Martin’s booby-trapped house, falling over cans, bottles and assorted rubble.Fearon said he heard a sudden bang and in the muzzleflash from the shotgun saw a man standing on the stairs. Barras cried: “He has got me,” and Fearon was shot twice.”My legs went and I fell down I came back up. Fred was still at my shoulder shouting and crying,” said Fearon. He said he remembered eight or nine loud bangs but had since been told some of them may have been the shots repeating in his head.

He said he was certain he definitely heard three very loud blasts. Fearon said he climbed out of the window and staggered through a field, believing Barras was behind him. He managed to get help at a nearby bungalow.Police say he never mentioned his friend, and Barras’s body – which lay concealed in undergrowth near the house – was not found until 14 hours later But Fearon insisted he had spoken of his companion. “I told him [an ambulance crew member] I had been shot and another lad had been shot,” he said.Mr Scrivener described Fearon’s account as rubbish, and suggested the thief had deliberately targeted the house and even gone to check it out weeks earlier. Some of Mr Martin’s silverware had been found in two holdalls, which Fearon had taken to the house and left behind, though he denied stealing. “Do you have any explanation for how this silverware got into your holdall?” said Mr Scrivener.

Fearon replied: “The farmer put them in to explain his actions.”The QC challenged the thief on various inconsistencies in his story from police interviews and in evidence, saying: “Why did you tell the police an untruth?” Fearon replied: “I was just coming out of sedation [in hospital] I just wanted to put all the blame on me. I thought, ‘You took the little lad there to get killed’.”John Slaughter, a forensic scientist, said tests on the dead boy revealed alcohol, cannabis and amphetamine in his system, though not enough to have had an effect on the night. The alcohol was at the drink-driving limit, the cannabis traces could have been days old, and he had only found residual amounts of amphetamine, which appeared to have been in the system for some while.Mr Martin has pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm without a licence The trial continues.. Police were continuing to question a man aged 24 last night after his five-month-old son died of injuries inflicted in his pram at a train station in Newcastle upon Tyne. Police were continuing to question a man aged 24 last night after his five-month-old son died of injuries inflicted in his pram at a train station in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Northumbria Police’s investigation became a murder inquiry after the boy died at around noon yesterday in the intensive care unit of Newcastle General Hospital, with his mother at his bedside. He was found in a pram on Sunday afternoon by police officers called to a station on the Tyne and Wear metro system He had suffered multiple head and facial injuries. One of his parents is believed to have been with him when the assault was reported, shortly before 4.20pm.Detective Superintendent Chris Symonds, leading the investigation, said the death was being treated as murder.

Detectives were given an extra 36 hours to question the man by Newcastle magistrates and three youths were released on bail last night pending further inquiries.Det Supt Symonds renewed his appeal for anyone who saw a man pushing a blue pram in the area of the Manors station to come forward. Those people who can help would have been in the station between 3.45pm and 4.21pm on Sunday.The first person police want to trace is a woman with red hair, aged between 30 and 40 who got off an eastbound train between 3.30pm and 4pm. Officers also want to trace two men described as looking like students who were on the platform at around 4.15pm. Both were about 6ft tall, the first in his late twenties, slim, with brown hair and metal-framed glasses He wore a blue and red waist-length jacket. The second had brown hair and facial stubble, wore a long black woollen coat, and spoke with a “posh accent”..