A drug-dealer dad from Exmouth, on trial for murdering his ex-best friend, has told a court he panicked and stabbed him, fearing he was about to be attacked with a weapon.
When asked in court ‘who stabbed Denva Smith?’ Thomas Ward, now 25, replied ‘I did. Because I thought I was under attack.’
Dad-of-three Denva Smith, aged 24, died from a single stab wound at the end of May last year. Standing trial at Exeter Crown Court, all denying murder, are Zac Davies, aged 23, of Hawthorn Grove, Exmouth; Dylan Chadwick, 23, of Cambourne Avenue, St Helens; Ben Mason, 23, of no fixed abode, Exmouth, Thomas Ward, aged 24, of Russell Walk, Exeter, and Ben Helliker, 26, of Halsdon Road in Exmouth.
Denva was stabbed once through the arm, severing an artery, and bled to death in a garden in Hawthorn Grove, Exmouth, after a ‘commotion’ in Dinan Way.
Former construction worker Ward, also a dad, said Denva suddenly appeared in front of him. Thinking he was carrying a weapon, Ward pulled a fishing knife from his waistband.
He denied his drug dealer friends cooked up a plan to rob Denva of his cocaine stash, or that co-accused Mason, who Denva attacked a week prior to the stabbing, was plotting to take over his drug dealing business.
Ward began dealing cocaine when he lost his construction site permit and working away on fishing boats caused arguments at home.
Ward told the jury he had been walking up a grass bank onto Dinan Way, heading home to get changed in anticipation of a night drinking with his mates, when Denva, hood pulled up, suddenly appeared, running at him.
Ward said he saw Denva holding ‘something’ in his right hand. He said: ”I thought it was a knife. I thought he was about to stab me with it. I almost felt like I had absolutely no time to react whatsoever. He was coming towards me. Initially I thought I was going to be stabbed.”
Ward said: “I took a step back, at this point I would have had my knife out, and slapped his arm away.
Ward said he gripped the knife with the blade sticking out, and waved it around in front of his chest.
“I just held it up so he would see it so it would make him think about coming near me,” said Ward.
He said he had not realised he had stabbed Denva. “It felt like we just clashed arms,” he told the jury.
Denva Smith and friend Kevin Fitzgerald had been walking a dog along Dinan Way in the early hours of May 30, 2025, when they were split up by the five men. Denva was chased down a grass bank towards garages near Hawthorn Grove, losing his slider shoes on the way.
The prosecution said the five men chased Denva around the garages, in the dark, until he fled, running into a back garden in Ashfield Close, where he bled to death from a single in-out stab wound to his forearm.
Ward denied Denva’s death had been the result of a plan to rob him of his stash of cocaine worth more than £5,000.
He said: “There wasn’t an exact plan. But we all knew we would go out and get drunk and get wrecked.”
He told the court: “In the house we didn’t have any alcohol and we needed to go and get some. The only place that was open was the 24-hour garage in Salterton Road.”
Doorbell footage picked up Ward asking for a lift to the shop, which was refused.
“I tried to persuade Zac to drive. I couldn’t be ars*d to walk. He said ‘nah’. He didn’t have enough room. I thought it was because he didn’t want to drug-drive.”
The five men left Davies’ house in Hawthorn Grove, walking up onto Dinan Way.
Ward, in front, walked up the grass bank leading onto Dinan Way and saw two men on the opposite side of the road. One, hood up, ran at him. He realised it was Denva Smith.
Ward said: “I saw something in his hands, I was more conscious about that and I saw he had a friend with him who at this point was in the middle of the road.”
He said the speed Denva approached ‘was fast enough to stop me in my tracks and panic’.
Ward called for his friends. He said: “I shouted down the bank. I shouted for my boys. I didn’t expect it at all. I was in shock.”
He admitted carrying a knife used for gutting fish. He said: “I was worried if I bumped into Denva I would get jumped by him and his mates.”
Shoeless Denva ran down the grass bank into garages, chased by Chadwick, Davies and Mason. From there he ran into a back garden in Ashfield Close, leaving a blood trail from a fatal stab wound.
“For the initial confrontation we were on the same side of the road. It just felt like we just clashed arms,” said Ward.
He told the jury: “He [Denva] ran down the bank, but he fell down the bank. He ran down the grass through the garages. I just assumed that’s where he went. I just assumed that they followed him. I just thought at the time they were chasing after him.”
Ward told the court: “He attacked me first.”
Kevin Fitzgerald, separated from Denva by two of the group, remained on Dinan Way.
Ward, wanting to ‘clear the air’ was heard shouting at Kevin how the fight was not with him.
“I felt a bit sick I didn’t want any more problems,” said Ward. “I didn’t think it was serious at that time. I didn’t think I had seriously injured him.” [Denva]
Doorbell footage picked up Ward telling Helliker ‘it’s a f**king set up’.
Ward explained how earlier that day Kevin Fitzgerald’s girlfriend contacted him multiple times for drugs. He told her he was around the corner from her. Ward thought she passed information of his whereabouts onto Denva.
Ward told the jury: “At first it didn’t really click in my head but Kevin Fitzgerald’s girlfriend had been casing me for a few hours.”
With Denva gone, Ward and his friends went to his flat in Gibson Close. He picked up Denva’s discarded shoes from Dinan Way, which police later found in a bin store next to his home.
As the friends walked up steps to the flat, Ward was told he had blood on his vest top.
Ward said: “I freaked out then. I thought I have hurt him. That was when everyone just panicked and the mood changed from having a good night with mates to panic.”
Ward told his girlfriend what happened. She ordered them out of the flat.
“I said to her I have stabbed Denva,” said Ward. “I didn’t realise Denva had been seriously hurt.”
Ward grabbed money and his drugs and left their home, staying with friends in Exeter and Dorset, before handing himself into police days later.
The court heard how Ward and Denva had been friends since teenagers. Ward was in care when they met.
When Ward’s foster placement failed, he lived with Denva his parents in Exmouth. Ward and Denva were frequently in trouble with police, shoplifting and causing criminal damage.
Their friendship ended when Ward started a relationship with Faith Lea, the mother of Denva’s child.
Ward, who took on the role as step-dad to Denva’s son, now has a child with Miss Lea.
Ward sobbed in court when letters written to him by Denva were read to the jury, hoping ‘to repair their friendship’ while they were both in prison.
Denva told Ward ‘the anger I have got for you right now, I will do something I regret’.
He said he had tried to kill himself after learning Ward intended to set up home with Miss Lea and his son on leaving jail.
Denva wrote ‘every time I close my eyes, I think about you two together, doing it. I wanted to kill you, it’s one of the reasons I got myself sent to prison. I realised I can’t lose my brother’.
The jury heard Denva warned Ward to stay away from Faith and his son, saying ‘I will kill you and I won’t give a f*ck about the charges.’
In another letter Denva told Ward their friendship would ‘never die’ after what they had been through. He wrote ‘I am lost in myself. I feel like I have lost everyone. I haven’t been eating this last week. I am scared I am going to lose the willpower to live. The girl I love told me my brother is trying to take my place as a dad to my kid’.
Denva told Ward ‘I will not forgive you’ when he heard Ward was to be his son’s step-dad, writing ‘I will kill you’.
The letters ended in an ultimatum, with Denva ordering Ward to choose between their friendship or Faith Lea.
He wrote ‘she told me you been [sic]sleeping together for most of our relationship. I just want you to be honest with me, you are my brother. It’s hard for me to forgive, but it’s hard for me to lose you..It’s either me or Faith because I can’t be friends with you.’
When Ward ignored the letters, Denva wrote calling him a ‘snake’, telling him he felt stabbed in the back. ‘I know you have always wanted a kid but if you think I am going to sit here and you steal mine..’
He told him ‘I am going to give you three weeks to make a decision. I hope you make the right decision’.
Ward told the jury Denva was the reason he had not wanted to live in Exmouth. He said he moved in with Faith in 2022, just before their child was born.
“I tried to avoid him. if I knew he was in the area I would try and avoid it,” said Ward.
“Sometimes he would be there for six months. When he was in prison and he came out I would just avoid him for a couple of weeks and he would be gone again.
“When I knew he was in the area we would go on family trips out to Budleigh Salterton because I was thinking I would be attacked by him.
“I did message him. I tried to smooth things out. I wanted to get him involved in [his son’s]life.”
The jury heard how in October 2024 Denva tried to attack Ward in Exeter during a shopping trip with his children.
Ward’s defence team told the jury how Denva had a history of crime, beginning in 2017 – guilty of assault, battery, grievous bodily harm, criminal damage, assaulting police, and threatening the family dog with a weapon.
Smith’s crimes, listed and read to the jury, ended shortly before he died in May 2025, when he made threats to stab a man, sending him a photo of a knife.
The trial continues.
