NZPA
17:17 12/10/2010 Dominion Post
Two men accused of murdering an Upper Hutt transvestite were seen stumbling and yelling drunkenly around the city on the day of the killing, a jury was told today.
David Shaun Galloway, 20, and Phillip Christopher Sanders, 42, have pleaded not guilty in the High Court in Wellington to the murder of Richard Milton Jones, 64.
Mr Jones, who was known as Dixie and dressed in woman's clothes, died from head injuries last year after he was assaulted in his Totara Park Rd flat on April 29, 2009.
Crown prosecutor Simon Barr said yesterday both men were found at Mr Jones' flat when police arrived at the scene.
The defence lawyers for each accused told the jury yesterday the other man was responsible for the fatal blows.
The court was told today that witnesses saw the accused behaving in an aggressive and angry manner in Upper Hutt on the day of the killing.
Georgina Carroll, of Upper Hutt, told the jury today she saw the pair with a female. The older man, assumed to be Sanders, yelled at the female and threw a plastic bottle at her.
Another witness, Leannne Bailey, said she was driving through when Upper
Hutt when a man, who the prosecution said was Sanders, lurched at her car.
''[He] looked at me with this menacing look, he had a scary look on his face.''
The two men looked like they were on drugs, she said.
The trial, before Justice Robert Dobson, is set down for four weeks and will hear from more than 70 witnesses