A TEENAGER from Liverpool, alleged to have been a drug dealer on Deeside, was stabbed nine times in a dispute over the sale of hard drugs, it was alleged today.

One of the stab wounds penetrated 19-year-old Matthew Cassidy’s heart and he died from massive internal bleeding, said prosecuting barrister Paul Lewis QC.

“He was just 19 years of age when he was so dreadfully and violently murdered,” Mr Lewis told the jury at Mold Crown Court.

One of the men on trial for his murder, David John Woods, is said to be the leader of a Liverpool drugs supply gang.

Opening the case, the prosecutor said that it was shortly before 8 p.m. on Monday, May 29 last year that Mr Cassidy, of Huyton in Liverpool, was stabbed to death in the stair well of a block of flats at Bethel Place in Connah’s Quay High Street.

It was likely that he was initially stabbed on the ground floor, tried to escape by fleeing upstairs, but was stabbed again.

Having reached the second landing he either fell, or was pushed or pulled, down to the first landing below.

There he collapsed, fatally injured.

Mr Lewis said that there were no eye witnesses but residents heard screaming and as they went to try and help him, two men were seen leaving the block of flats, just moments before the stricken Mr Cassidy was found.

It was the prosecution case that the two men were defendants David John Woods, 20, of Douglas Place in Liverpool, but who at the time was said to have been staying locally on Deeside, and Leslie Peter Baines, 48, of King’s Road in Connah’s Quay.

Woods and Baines both deny a murder charge.

Mr Lewis said that Woods admitted that he was the leader of a gang of drug dealers and had claimed to police that Mr Cassidy was part of his gang of pushers.

But the prosecution rejected that assertion, said Mr Lewis.

It was the prosecution case that Mr Cassidy did not work for Woods but was actually a competitor of his.

“We allege that the murder occurred as a result of a dispute or some rivalry between him and the two defendants over the sale of drugs,” said Mr Lewis.

The trial, before Mr Justice Clive Lewis, is proceeding and is expected to last up to three weeks.