A British court has heard that a company director has died after being shot in the mouth at point blank range with a silenced pistol by armed robbers.
Akhtar Javeed was killed in February and was shot in the throat, leg and foot after refusing to open the safe, Birmingham Crown Court was told.
He died with his hands bound ‘in a pool of his own blood’ on a pavement outside his delivery firm's Birmingham warehouse.
The accused Suraj Mistry, 26, and Lemar Wali, 18, deny murder. The pair also deny conspiring to rob and possessing firearms with intent to cause fear of violence.
Prosecutor James Curtis QC said Javeed a grandfather known affectionately by staff as Big Brother was shot four times during the raid on the warehouse.
The man who fired the gun was 25-year-old Tahir Zarif, of Osmaston Park Road, Derby, who fled to Pakistan after the murder and is still at large, he said.
Mistry of Leicester, is said to be the other gunman and is alleged to have driven Zarif to Heathrow airport after the shooting.
Wali, of Derby, is accused of driving the getaway vehicle from the scene.
Jurors were told they would see CCTV footage of two masked gunmen ‘through the door, guns already in their hand’, before taking staff prisoner and binding their hands.
Curtis said Javeed from east London, was ‘terribly brave’ during the robbery and tried to fight back.
He was ordered into a corridor ‘no doubt to get him to the safe and open it at gunpoint’, but he refused. As he tried to escape, he was shot by Zarif, the prosecutor said.
‘He was able to burst outside, mortally wounded, where he collapsed on the pavement and died from the shock and the blood loss.’
Curtis said the men had help from an insider, Dutch national Sander van Aalten, 50, who pleaded guilty to plan the robbery at an earlier hearing. He had also carried out a reconnaissance of the premises.
Another man, Asif Aurangzaib, 25, also from Derby, denies a charge of conspiracy to rob.
The trial is expected to last five weeks.
