Murder trial told victim was marched to his death

Winchester Crown Court was told yesterday.

He was murdered in as ''callously, cruel, chilling, and calculated'' a

manner as one could imagine, the prosecution said.

He was taken to his place of ''execution'' where he was stabbed and

then left. Eventually he died from a combination of shock, hypothermia,

and stab wounds, the jury was told.

Mr Matthew Pearce, 21, of Chichester Road, Portsmouth, and Mr Darren

Jones, 21, of Grayshott Road, Southsea, Hampshire, both deny murdering

Mr Grant Price, 43.

They also deny a second charge of unlawfully wounding another man, Mr

James Wink, 20.

Mr Michael Hubbard, QC, prosecuting, said the accountant had been

kidnapped in a busy car park at Gosport, Hampshire, on a Saturday

afternoon in January last year.

''He was kidnapped in the sense that he was bundled into his own motor

car, which he had parked in that car park in the sight of his

eight-year-old boy,'' said counsel.

''He was about to take his son to keep an appointment at an optician's

in the High Street in Gosport.''

Counsel said he was then taken around the countryside and attempts

made, some successful, to get money from cashpoint machines using his

cash cards. He was then bundled into the boot of his car, gagged, and

driven more than 40 miles through the New Forest to Keyhaven.

''Then he was subjected to a walk of something in the order of one and

a half miles along a desolate shingle bank which marks the entrance of

the Western Approaches of the Solent,'' said Mr Hubbard.

''He was led to the spot of his execution,'' said counsel, and there

he was stabbed in the back of the neck.

''He did not die immediately. He was left in a spot which is as

desolate as you might expect to find on the coastline and eventually he

died from a combination of shock, hypothermia, and stab wounds.''

Mr Price's body was found six days later, said Mr Hubbard.

He said that three hours or so before Mr Price was kidnapped, a

20-year-old man had been subjected to a vicious attack with a knife in a

car park five miles away at Fareham, when he would not hand over the

keys to his car.

The prosecution alleged that both attacks were linked and committed by

the two accused.

At the time of the kidnap in Gosport, a witness said the front seat

passenger in the car seemed ''as if he had the fear of God in him''.

The court was told Mr Price's son David was found crying in the car

park by a passer-by after the kidnappers had driven off with his father.

He was taken to the police station nearby.

He was spared the trauma of giving evidence before a jury after

defence barristers agreed a summary could be read out.

In the written statement, the boy said they left the vehicle in the

car park near the bridge.

''After walking for a while, I told dad I had left my glasses in the

car. We were going to the optician's and he went back to get them.

''He left me at the car park entrance near some flats and I saw him go

back to the car. I then saw dad's car driving off with three people in

it.

''There were two in the back and one in the front but I could not see

who was driving,'' he said.

Mr Jones was arrested after police carried out house-to-house searches

of the area near where Mr Price's car was discovered, the jury was told.

Officers recognised him from an artist's impression produced from a

description of a man seen at a cash-point in Alton on the day Mr Price

was kidnapped.

The trial was adjourned until today.