Friend of ex-Sheffield graduates’ ‘killer’ buried gun in garden

Marvin Gaines, 19, buried shell casings and a gun in his backyard for Shawn Tyson because he was trying to help his friend out.

Tyson, 17, is accused of killing James Kouzaris, 24, and James Cooper, 25, who were shot dead after they drunkenly walked into a public housing estate known as The Courts in the early hours of April 16 last year.

The men, who were both Sheffield University graduates, were found shirtless with their trousers round their thighs, but still had their wallets and a small amount of money on them.

Tyson, 17, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder. If convicted, he faces life in prison without parole.

Mr Gaines told the court he saw Tyson on April 16, when he confessed to the killings.

“He pulled me to the side. He asked me did I hear what happened. I told him no.”

Mr Gaines said Tyson asked him: “You didn’t hear about them people getting killed back there?”

When he said no, Tyson, then 16, said: “Oh bra, I did that.”

Mr Gaines said that in Tyson’s brother’s bedroom inside his house, Tyson gave him shell casings that were hidden in a suitcase.

“He gave them to me and told me to bury them,” he told the court.

“I asked him ‘Do you want me to bury them or throw them away?’ He told me to bury them.”

Mr Gaines said he buried the seven shell casings in his backyard to help his friend.

He said: “I was just trying to help him out because he made a big mistake. He had made a mistake, he shouldn’t have did it.”

Mr Gaines told the court that later that day Tyson called him and told him he had hidden a gun under his house.

He said his friend said: “Bra, I put the gun under your house.”

Mr Gaines found the gun and then buried it too because, he said, Tyson told him to.

The court has heard Mr Cooper, from Hampton Lucy, Warwick, was shot four times, while Mr Kouzaris, from Northampton, were shot twice in the back.

Mr Gaines said that in his first interview with detectives he did not say anything about what he knew because he was scared.

But the court heard he was later warned he could be charged as an accessory to murder.

The trial continues.