A MERSEYSIDE man has insisted he was watching Liverpool play when he was alleged to have been threatening a family.
Dominic Kearns is accused of targeting the family of Jason Cullen after the 19-year-old began to buy cocaine off him.
A jury at Liverpool Crown Court has been told on January 15 he arrived at their Wirral home demanding £7,000 and making threats.
But yesterday Kearns said he was at Anfield watching Liverpool play at the tim of the alleged incident. The 24-year-old claimed CCTV footage from the ground would prove his innocence, but club officials were unable to provide a close-up.
Kearns, of Coniston Street, Anfield, said his only contact with the Cullen family had been three weeks when he bought cheap cigarettes off them.
He told a jury: “I would just to go to his house, sometimes his dad would answer, sometimes his mum.
“They would always invite us in, obviously they didn’t want people on the street seeing.”
Kearns would buy up to 1,000 cigarettes a time.
He added: “Their house was always busy, people coming and going and people buying things off them all the time.”
The court has heard since the alleged blackmail, Gordon Cullen, of Greenbank Road, West Kirby, has been jailed for four years for swindling the state out of more than £66,800.
The father-of-five told officials he could not work because of a bad back, but was in fact running a lucrative illegal business, making and selling counterfeit DVDs, CDs and MP3s.
In evidence, Cullen said he was “certain” the blackmail was not connected with his dodgy trade and at his sentencing claimed he had spent some of the cash paying off his son’s drug debt.
Kearns said he had never sold Jason Cullen cocaine.
He denies two counts of blackmail between July 1, 2007, and January 15. Graham Pickavance, prosecuting, told the court the Cullen family had fled to Ireland after Kearns made escalating cash demands and threatened them.
IN WEDNESDAY’S report of the proceedings, it was stated that Kearns produced a gun as his alleged blackmailing escalated.
In fact, it is alleged that Kearns threatened that a man with him had a gun, but it is not part of the prosecution case that a weapon was produced.
