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A man has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering two women and trying to kill two other people, including his son, in Milton Keynes on Christmas Day last year.
Jazwell Brown launched unprovoked and “frenzied” attacks on four people after taking cocaine, a court heard. He fatally stabbed Joanne Pearson and beat her in their flat in the Buckinghamshire town before stabbing his son Jake Brown, leaving him with a life-threatening wound to his chest, Luton crown court heard.
He then went to his neighbour’s flat where he stabbed Teohna Grant to death and tried to kill her boyfriend, Bradley Latter, by also stabbing him several times.
The prosecutor Deanna Heer KC told the court: “The evidence suggests that the assaults were wholly unprovoked, committed by the defendant whilst he was under the influence of cocaine.”
The court heard that Brown and Pearson had been in an “unhealthy” relationship for several years, with both taking class A drugs, Heer said. Jake visited their flat and Pearson told him they had been smoking crack cocaine. After she was reluctant to smoke it in front of Jake, Brown “seemed to become suspicious”, Heer said.
“The defendant then picked up a screwdriver and a kitchen knife from the table in the living room and approached Pearson, who asked him what he was doing and tried to walk away. Without saying a word, he began to stab her with the knife repeatedly in a frenzied attack. Jake Brown tried to pull his father away from her, only for the defendant to turn to him and stab him in the chest.”
Brown then made his way across the communal landing to the flat next door where Latter and Grant were sitting in the living room enjoying a quiet Christmas Day, the court heard. With a blank face, the defendant stabbed both victims multiple times, Heer said.
Latter told Brown in a victim impact statement: “We both thought of you as our neighbour and close friend for a number of years. The impact your crimes have had on me are never-ending. My whole world and future was heinously taken away by you. The world will now and forever go on without you here.”
Grant’s sister, Parris Grant, said Grant was “a pure and kind soul” and described her as “irreplaceable”. She told Jazwell Brown: “I don’t see Christmas as Christmas any more – I see it as the day you stole my sister.”
Mr Justice Kerr told the defendant: “The terrible crimes you committed that day have torn apart the lives of many people.” The judge said he accepted a psychiatric report that “the use of illegal drugs was the immediate trigger of the attacks”, adding: “That intoxication was voluntary.” He said Brown’s assault on his son was “a terrible betrayal of a son’s natural trust in his father”.
Brown was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 39 years after pleading guilty to two charges of murder, two of attempted murder, one of unlawful possession of a knife and one of causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal.
