Two boys murdered in case of mistaken identity, Bristol court told

Two teenage boys were murdered in the street by four youths and a man in his 40s who had mistaken them for the perpetrators of an earlier attack on a house in Bristol linked to a long-running postcode rivalry, a court has heard.

Mason Rist, 15, and Max Dixon, 16, were fatally attacked in Ilminster Avenue, in the Knowle West area of Bristol, on the evening of 27 January this year.

Ray Tully KC, prosecuting, told the jury at Bristol crown court that the group of five defendants – Antony Snook, 45, Riley Tolliver, 18, and three boys aged 15, 16 and 17 – had driven to the area in Snook’s Audi with “some pretty fearsome weapons”. The jury was shown two machetes, which Tully said had been recovered after the fatal attack.

The prosecutor told the court the group was seeking revenge for an attack on a house in the Hartcliffe area of Bristol, in which windows were smashed and a woman was injured, but they were “entirely wrong” in thinking Mason and Max were responsible.

The origin of the events in the case can be linked to rivalry lasting many years between Hartcliffe, or BS13, and Knowle, or BS4, the jury was told.

The attack was captured by a CCTV camera on Mason’s home in footage lasting two and a half minutes that was played to the jury on Wednesday.

At about 11pm Snook, Tolliver, who was 17 at the time of the alleged attack, and the other teenage defendants left Hartcliffe in Snook’s Audi Q2, the court heard.

“They were all ‘tooled up’,” Tully told the court. “They had some pretty fearsome weapons with them.

“The five occupants of the car drove from Hartcliffe to Knowle West. As they set off, we say, they were on the hunt for the people they thought were responsible for the attack on the house. They set off together, they were on a joint mission, and we say that was for revenge on the attack of the house.

“As they drove past Max and Mason walking down the street, they thought they had spotted the people responsible for the earlier attack – or at the very least, people connected to it.

“They were entirely wrong about that. Max and Mason had absolutely nothing to do with any earlier incident and no connection whatsoever with those events.”

Max and Mason sustained stab wounds and died of their injuries.

Tully said the prosecution’s case was that the five defendants “acted jointly and are all jointly responsible for what happened.

“In short, we say they were in it together,” he added. “They wanted at the very least to really hurt both boys. This was an attack based on the desire for revenge. They had gone armed and wanted to inflict harm on those they thought were responsible.”

The five defendants are charged with two counts of murder.

Mrs Justice May, the trial judge, told the jury of nine men and three women that the teenage defendants had special educational needs.

The trial, which is expected to last 10 weeks, continues.