Canterbury Crown Court heard that Callum Wheeler, from Aylesham in Kent, accepts that he killed Julia James, but denies murder.
09 May 2022
A smart watch worn by a police community support officer in her final moments captured a spike in her heart rate as she spotted her killer in woodland and tried to flee, a jury has heard.
The Apple watch belonging to Julia James showed that her heart rate had gone from 97 up to 145 within seconds at the point it is said she spotted Callum Wheeler in Ackholt Wood, Kent on April 27 last year.
Mrs James, 53, had been out walking her Jack Russell dog, Toby, when she was chased and hit over the head with a rail jack, jurors at Canterbury Crown Court were told.
Wheeler, 22, from Aylesham in Kent, admits killing her but denies murder.
Prosecutor Alison Morgan QC told the court that Mrs James had seen Wheeler around Ackholt Wood, near her home in the hamlet of Snowdown in Kent, in the months before she died, and described him to her husband Paul as “a really weird dude”.
On the day that she died, Mrs James saw Wheeler in the same place she had before.
Ms Morgan said: “The defendant was in that same place that Paul James and Julia James had seen him before, and it was at that point that Julia James’s heart rate surged.
“She took a sudden detour off the path that goes through the wooded area.
“She began to move along the edge of the field.”
The prosecutor went on: “She has run out of the wood, doubtless to try to escape her attacker, and has got as far as she could along the path.”
Mrs James then fell, either from a first blow to the head or by tripping, the court heard, and was subjected to a “violent and sustained blunt force trauma assault to the head”.
Ms Morgan said: “Given the serious nature of the violent injuries to her head which caused her skull to cave in, the majority of these injuries must have been inflicted when she was face down on the ground with her hood up.”
The court heard that she died “extremely rapidly” from the injuries.
The prosecution allege that Mrs James was killed with a metal railway jack which, they say, was later found in the defendant’s bedroom.
Several members of Mrs James’s family attended court to hear the prosecution open the case.
