A JURY has begun considering whether two teenagers are guilty of the murder of Bolton schoolboy Reece Tansey.

After a trial which has lasted almost three weeks, today (Thursday) the Judge, Mrs Justice Farbey, summed up the case for the jury and asked them to begin their deliberations.

She told the jury of seven men and five women that they should try and reach unanimous verdicts.

“Do not put yourselves under any pressure of time,” she told them.

The defendants, both aged 15 and cannot be identified, deny murdering Reece, also aged 15, who was stabbed to death in Walker Avenue, Great Lever in the early hours of May 4, after they all met up for a fight.

Boy A admits that he stabbed Reece six times but denies that he intended to kill or seriously injure him while Boy B claims that, although he was present at the scene, he did not have knife himself or see his friend with one.

Prior to the judge summing up the evidence the jury heard from Nina Grahame QC, who defends Boy B.

She appealed to the jury to put emotion to one side when considering his involvement in what happened that night.

Boy A claims that he gave a knife to his friend before they met Reece and his barrister suggested that he had been used by Boy B to “do his dirty work” in the fight with Reece.

But Miss Grahame told the court that was untrue.

“They say the sinister [Boy B] is deploying [Boy A] as his weapon,” said Miss Grahame, who added that Boy A is “is lying about Boy B to push away the blame from himself”.

Miss Grahame pointed out to the jury that, on the night of the attack, it was dark and raining and, when Boy A was chasing Reece along Walker Avenue, Boy B was behind him and so would not have seen him stabbing Reece with a knife.

She added that a friend of Boy B, who was on the phone to him shortly before the fight, was wrong when she claimed to have heard Boy A in the background saying he had a knife as the CCTV footage showed the two teenagers had not yet met at the time the call was made.

Miss Grahame added that the girl might have been influenced by later seeing a video of Boy A’s blood-covered knife which he posted on social media shortly after stabbing Reece.

“Whether she is lying or she made a mistake she got it wrong,” said Miss Grahame.

And Miss Grahame suggested that a message which Boy B sent to Boy A later that morning, in which he stated that Reece would not say anything because he would be in shock at what had happened indicates that he did not realise that Boy A had seriously injured and killed the Harper Green School pupil.

Concluding her remarks, she told the jury that when they consider their verdicts, “however hard it is, you are not to be swayed by emotion.”

The prosecution claim that both Boy A and Boy B armed themselves with knives to take to the fight, with Boy A inflicting the fatal blows while Boy B encouraged him.

The trial continues.