Alicia Laing is alleged to have reset Matthew Smith’s phone following the stabbing
Marley Gascoine lost his life after being stabbed on November 10(Image: Oliver Pridmore/Nottingham Post)
A young Nottingham woman has appeared in court charged with helping a convicted killer after he stabbed a man to death in St Ann’s.
Alicia Laing is alleged to have reset Matthew Smith’s phone after he left the scene of the killing of 20-year-old Marley Gascoine.
The 20-year-old defendant, of Lenton Boulevard, Lenton, was not asked to enter any plea to the charge of perverting the course of justice when she appeared at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court this week (Thursday, July 30).
Magistrates told the accused her case would be sent to Nottingham Crown Court where she is due to appear next month.
They handed her bail on the conditions that she does not enter any prison estate, does not contact a number of named people, and lives and sleeps at her own address each evening.
Following a trial earlier this year, a jury spent almost four days deliberating before acquitting Matthew Smith of murdering Marley Gascoine and instead finding him guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter.
The victim died from a single stab wound to the chest which punctured his heart at around 12.50pm on November 10, last year.
Despite the best efforts of people who attended and the emergency services, he died at the scene in Robin Hood Chase.
Adjourning Smith’s sentence until September 7, Judge Steven Coupland said: “Mr Smith the jury have convicted you of manslaughter and I am going to adjourn your sentence for the preparation of a presentence report owing to your age.
“I am going to remand you into custody until then.”
Giving evidence Smith, of First Avenue, Carlton, said it was Mr Gascoine who pulled the blade from his waistband and lunged towards him.
He said he then disarmed him of the weapon and in the melee the victim suffered the fatal injury.
He told the jury: “I did not thrust it or even make a stabbing action, I used my hand to push him, that is, I wanted to get him away.
“I definitely did not see any of the knife go in.”
Matthew Smith, 20, of First Avenue, Carlton, was found guilty of the manslaughter of Marley Gascoine in St Ann’s in November, 2025.(Image: Nottinghamshire Police)
The trial heard how Mr Gascoine and his friend Dominic Bingham were out in St Ann’s on an electric bike on the day he was fatally stabbed.
Prosecutor Kath Goddard KC said Smith and a fourth man called Slavomir Draskovic were also out on an electric bike and the quartet, who all knew each other, were all involved in selling drugs.
She said a possible motive was a £6,000 debt the deceased allegedly owed and after the four friends all initially met at a different nearby underpass the two groups went their separate ways.
Ms Goddard said they then came together again later in Robin Hood Chase before Smith dropped Mr Draskovic off at a house and returned alone.
Once back, the stabbing happened.
Smith then fled from the scene to a nearby house and disposed of the weapon and the clothing he was wearing.