A police community support officer’s smartwatch captured the moment she was ambushed in a “brutal and fatal attack” as she walked her dog, a court has heard.
Callum Wheeler, 22, is accused of “waiting in the woods” before bludgeoning Julia James, 53, with a 3kg railway jack.
James’s Apple watch showed that her pace and heart rate “radically changed” when she spotted Wheeler lurking in Ackholt Woods near her home in Snowdown, Kent, on 27 April last year.
The data showed that James “ran, desperate to get away”, but Wheeler chased her down before hitting her repeatedly over the head, Canterbury crown court heard.
She was found lying face down in a field by local people less than two hours after taking her jack russell, Toby, on a walk to a spot she knew as “Butterfly Corner”.
Jurors heard that Wheeler, who lives with his father in the neighbouring village of Aylesham, in Kent, accepts that he killed James but denies murder.
Wheeler appeared in the dock flanked by four officials as the prosecutor Alison Morgan QC opened his trial.
She said: “The evidence suggests that her attacker was waiting in the woods for someone to attack and then ambushed her. Julia tried to escape her attacker but was subjected to a brutal and fatal attack. She sustained catastrophic injuries and died where she fell.”
She added: “Although [Wheeler] denied responsibility for the killing for some time, he does now accept that he was the person that killed Julia James; however, he does not accept that he is guilty of the offence of murder.”
The court heard that James had seen Wheeler in the vicinity of Ackholt Wood, where she would regularly walk her dog, in the months before the murder.
The prosecutor said: “Julia James was herself aware of the presence of a strange male near to Ackholt Wood. On two occasions … she commented to her husband, Paul James, that she had passed someone who was a ‘really weird dude’.”
She later pointed out the male, alleged to have been Wheeler, to her husband during a walk together in February 2021.
On the day she died, James saw Wheeler in the same spot, the prosecutor said.
Morgan said: “He waited for Julia James, or another vulnerable female, to be in that woods. He waited to ambush her. He chased her down. She ran, desperate to get away from her attacker. Unable to outrun him, caught by surprise, wearing wellingtons. He struck her. She fell and broke her wrist. Then, when she was faced down on the ground, he struck her again and again and again. She had no chance of survival.”
The prosecutor said James left her home at 2.12pm to take her dog for a walk. Her Apple watch showed that her heart rate increased “dramatically” from 97 bpm to 145 bpm as she deviated from her normal route on the way back.
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.
“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.”
James then fell, either from a first blow to the head or by tripping, and was subjected to a “violent and sustained blunt force trauma assault to the head”.
Morgan said the murder weapon, a railway jack, was later found in the defendant’s bedroom.
The trial, which is expected to last four weeks, continues.
