On 17 October, 2025, the night of the murder, Pennell had bombarded Phillips with “disturbing” calls and text messages, accusing her of seeing other men.<\/p>\n
Feeling unsafe, she asked Keen to come to her address, where they were both ambushed by Pennell. <\/p>\n
CCTV footage showed Pennell outside the flats, peering through the spy hole in the front door, before selecting a large kitchen knife, around 8 to 9 inches long.<\/p>\n
The prosecution said this was the point where Pennell made “a decision to kill”.<\/p>\n
Phillips told investigators she and Keen were in bed when they heard someone fiddling with the lock and “booting the chain off the door”.<\/p>\n
She said Pennell “pounced” on Keen and both men began “grappling”. <\/p>\n
Phillips said she ran to fetch a neighbour, and when she returned there was “blood all over the walls”. <\/p>\n
“Kai was like a demon had taken over his body,” she said. “His face was petrifying.”<\/p>\n
Pennell then fled the scene before being found by police helicopters in a wooded area close to the flats a few hours later.<\/p>\n
A post-mortem examination recorded a number of stab wounds to Keen’s body, as well as slash wounds on his arms where he had tried to protect himself.<\/p>\n
When interviewed by police, Pennell answered “no comment”.<\/p>\n
Toxicology reports found no alcohol in his system but levels of heroin, cocaine and methadone were detected, likely to have been from use over the previous 24 hours.<\/p>\n
However, the court heard it was “not possible” to know what impact the drugs may have had on Pennell, who was a long-term drug user.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On 17 October, 2025, the night of the murder, Pennell had bombarded Phillips with “disturbing” calls and text…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-443654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}