Rapper boyfriend 'strangled partner to death in row over hair in plug hole'

Daniel Jones

Dan In lee

Daniel Jones, 27, is accused of killing petite South Korean national Da In Lee following a row about household chores at his flat in Tipton, West Mids.A wannabe rap musician strangled his girlfriend after a 'petty argument' about hair being found in the plughole, a court heard.

Daniel Jones, 27, is accused of killing petite South Korean national Da In Lee following a row about household chores at his flat in Tipton, West Midlands.

The aspiring rapper, who goes by the street name 'Conscious D', allegedly strangled his student girlfriend to death before hiding her body under a duvet and fleeing on a train to Bristol on Easter Sunday last year.

A jury at Wolverhampton Crown Court was told that Jones admitted to his ex-partner that he had killed Miss Lee, who studied international relations and sociology at Aston University, Birmingham.

The information was passed on to West Midlands Police and officers discovered Miss Lee's dead body in Jones' bed at 6.50pm on Monday, April 9.

Jones was arrested after police in Bristol found him on board a train heading for Birmingham at the city's Temple Mead station.

Gordon Aspden, prosecuting, told the court Miss Lee had ended the pair's relationship days before her death.

He said: "At the time of her death Da In Lee was just 22.

"She was clearly an intelligent young woman because she travelled half way around the world to the UK in order to complete her education.

"In 2011 Da In Lee met Daniel Jones. She met him at a church that she attended in south Birmingham.
"The two of them became friendly and in due course a relationship developed between them. The relationship gradually began to deteriorate. "There were frequent arguments and rows and they would end up shouting insults.

"Miss Lee eventually finished with this defendant on March 24."

Mr Aspden said there were attempts at reconciliation between the pair over the Easter weekend last year, but things soon took a turn for the worse.

He added: "Swiftly and violently it all went wrong. By Easter Sunday evening Da In Lee was dead."Mr Aspden added that when he was being quizzed by officers, Jones claimed he had killed Miss Lee by accident.

He told jurors: "He said the background had been a petty quarrel over household chores and hair being found in the plughole.

"The two of them had started pushing each other. He said he had caused her to fall over and then quickly he got on top of her.

"He said when Miss Lee had been underneath him she had struggled and screamed so he put his left hand over her mouth.

"He had then taken hold of her throat with his right hand.

"He described how her face had gone a purplish blue, he said he had seen tears well up in her eyes and two tears rolling down her face.

"He said that when he was applying pressure and she was turning blue he had not intended to cause her any harm."

The court heard that Jones insisted he 'didn't know how long it was he was applying pressure to her throat', and that he 'all he wanted to do was to calm her down.'

CCTV cameras showed Jones using Miss Lee's key fob to enter her student halls building at 12.30am and again at 10.20am on Bank Holiday Monday when he caught a train to Bristol.

The court also heard that while in Bristol Jones had used Miss Lee's mobile phone to ring a company called Dial-a-flight to try to arrange a flight to New York - but he hung up before it was booked.

Jones denies murder. The trial continues.