A HOSTEL tenant has told how his flat was taken over by a gang of drug dealers the day before one of them was killed in a knife attack.

London-based drug dealer Tyrone Mulinde died after being stabbed in the heart and the arm during a fight in a top-floor room at Dampiet House, Bridgwater, on October 20 last year.

Nial Koporo and Olivia Cromwell are on trial at Exeter Crown Court accused of murdering him as part of a plan to rob him of drugs and money.

The prosecution say Koporo stabbed him and Cromwell helped to plan the attack.

They had both been selling drugs for Mulinde in Yeovil and they were angry because they felt he had gone back on promises to pay them.

Mulinde and two other men, Adam Mulligan and Malik Julouis, were selling drugs in Bridgwater and had set up a base at two flats inside Dampiet House which they had taken over for their own use in an practice known as 'cuckooing'.

The jury have been shown CCTV of the three men going in and out of one flat on the ground floor and another on the top floor in the two days before the killing.

Further footage shows Koporo and Cromwell arriving from Yeovil just six minutes before the killing at lunchtime on Saturday October 20 and both leaving shortly afterwards.

They both returned to London, where Koporo is alleged to have been seen washing a large wad of blood-stained bank notes and drying them with a hairdryer, before using some of them to pay his rent.

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Cromwell, 18, of Crescent Way, North Finchley, and Koporo, 25, of St Stephens Crescent, Westminster, both deny murder.

Cromwell says she had no idea that Koporo was going to attack Mulinde, while Koporo says one of the other people in the room carried out the stabbing.

A Dampiet House told the jury he met a man in the lobby on the night before the attack.

He was hanging around and said he was waiting to get into another flat.

He said: "Against my better judgment, I let him wait in my flat on the top floor. One guy quickly turned into three guys being in my flat.

"I had things to do the next day and by the early hours of the morning I felt a little uncomfortable being there with the lads.

"I wasn't getting any sleep and I made my excuses and went."

He said he cycled to his mother's house, returning home in the morning and urging the men to leave without success.

He left again and found the whole building cordoned off by the police when he returned later.