Latest news with #RichardJones
The Independent
a day ago
- General
- The Independent
Partner of dog walker tells murder trial of their last phone call
The long-term partner of a woman who was attacked while walking her dog and died in hospital four days later told a court that the last thing she said to him was 'drive safe, I love you'. Lorry driver Richard Jones said he would keep in touch with his partner Anita Rose while he was working away, and that they spoke on the morning of July 24 last year – the day she was found injured. Prosecutors allege that 56-year-old Roy Barclay, who had been 'on the run trying to avoid the police… and avoid being recalled back to prison', killed Ms Rose. Barclay, of no fixed address, denies her murder and is on trial at Ipswich Crown Court. Mother-of-six Ms Rose, 57, was found injured by a cyclist in Brantham, Suffolk, on July 24 last year and died four days later of traumatic head injuries. Mr Jones said he and Ms Rose shared an English springer dog called Bruce, but she would tell him it was his dog when she walked it. Prosecutor Christopher Paxton said that in a call at 5.24am on July 24, Ms Rose told Mr Jones: 'I'm walking your bloody dog already.' Mr Jones said he had been working away at Goole in the East Riding of Yorkshire when he called her that morning. Mr Paxton said: 'We know the call lasted just over three minutes. 'What can you remember talking about?' Mr Jones said: 'She asked if I was up ready for work, I said I was but I was running late. 'I said I will phone you when I get there. 'She said 'drive safe, I love you'. 'That's the last conversation I had with her.' Mr Paxton asked how Ms Rose had sounded, and Mr Jones replied: 'Fine.' The court heard Mr Jones made a WhatsApp video call to Ms Rose at 6.15am as he was off-loading his lorry at a Tesco site. Mr Jones said: 'It got answered but there was a black screen.' He said there was 'no sound', and asked by Mr Paxton if he could hear anything he said: 'No, nothing.' Mr Paxton said: 'We know the video call was open for a minute – did you say anything?' Mr Jones replied: 'All I said was 'Anita, Anita'.' He said he did not hear anything back. Judge Martyn Levett asked Mr Jones: 'Had that ever happened to you before on a call like that?' He replied: 'No, never.' Mr Jones said he ended the call, and that a number of further calls that he made to Ms Rose went unanswered. 'I thought it was strange for her not to answer her phone,' he said. 'The night before she puts her phone on charge.' Mr Jones said he had known Ms Rose since he was a teenager, and he is now 'coming up to 60'. He said they had been in a relationship since 2011. Mr Jones described Ms Rose as 'very houseproud' and said she felt 'very safe' in Brantham. The trial continues.
Belfast Telegraph
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Belfast Telegraph
‘I like all the history with the Dunlops': Stereophonics bassist Jones shares love of NW200 and Celtic connections ahead of Belsonic opener
Rock icons Stereophonics are getting set to kick off this year's Belsonic, the month-long music extravaganza in Belfast's Ormeau Park. And founder member Richard Jones joked that while the band are ready for another blistering show, he hopes it won't be as dramatic as an abiding memory from a previous visit.
BBC News
a day ago
- General
- BBC News
Partner of Brantham dog walker Anita Rose tells of final phone call
The partner of a woman who was attacked while walking her dog and died four days later has told a court of their final phone Rose, 57, was found seriously injured in her home village of Brantham, Suffolk, on 24 partner Richard Jones told a court that Ms Rose felt "very safe" in the village and her last message to him was "drive safe, I love you".Roy Barclay, 56, of no fixed address, denies murder and is on trial at Ipswich Crown Court. Mr Jones said he had known Ms Rose since they were teenagers but they began dating in 2011 after they met by chance at a prosecution told the court the pair had moved to Brantham where they lived with her son, Jones told jurors Ms Rose would get up early to walk their dog as "she liked to be out before others because she liked to watch the sun come up" and said she felt "very safe" in the court was told that on 24 July, Mr Jones had called Ms Rose at 05:24 as he was away working in East Yorkshire and that the call had lasted three Jones, who is a lorry driver, said the last conversation he ever had with Ms Rose ended with her saying: "Ok babe, drive safe, I love you." The jury heard that at 06:15, Mr Jones video-called his partner but this time the screen was black and there was no sound, even though the call was said this was "very odd" so he tried to call Ms Rose a number of times 06:25, she was found with serious head injuries by a cyclist near the Brantham sewage allege that Barclay, who had been "on the run trying to avoid the police... and avoid being recalled back to prison", killed Ms cross-examination, Mr Jones was asked why, if he was very worried about his partner, he had posted an image of Kermit the Frog making a joke about sausages on Facebook at 07: Jones told the court that he thought it was funny and that he did not know what had happened to Ms Rose at that trial continues. Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Metro
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Survival Kids hands-on preview – the biggest Switch 2 third party exclusive
GameCentral speaks to the makers of Konami's latest reboot: a four-player co-op game that is the most exciting third party exclusive for the Nintendo Switch 2. No one can complain about the volume of launch games being released alongside the Nintendo Switch 2, but unfortunately they're almost all ports and remasters of existing third party titles. There's only two first party Nintendo games – Mario Kart World and Welcome Tour – and only two exclusive third party titles: this and future racer Fast Fusion, from Fast RMX maker Shin'en. That's a budget-priced indie title though, while this is a reboot of an old Konami franchise that we happen to have been fans of back in the late nineties. We're not even going to speculate as to why Konami keeps reviving smaller franchises like this, while leaving Castlevania on the shelf, but it's easy enough to see why a four-player co-op game with a family friendly vibe would seem like a good idea for a Switch 2 launch title. We got to play multiple levels from the game at a preview event last week, and it was a lot of fun. We're not sure it's rather basic visuals were the best idea, since they can seem rather cheap and childish, but this is a solid game with some enjoyably meaty puzzles, that might just end up as the Switch 2's first hidden gem. Survival Kids was originally released in 1999 for the Game Boy Color, although in Japan and Europe it was called Stranded Kids – for subsequent entries it switched to the name Lost In Blue in the West, the last of which was on the Wii in 2008. For once, the American name made more sense though, as the original is one of the very first entries in the survival game genre, more than a decade before the concept became more commonplace. As such, you foraged for food to keep you going, while trying to build structures and rafts in order to help you escape the desert island you were stuck on – think a cosy sim like Stardew Valley but with the ability to starve to death. 'We were looking through the back catalogue of Konami titles, looking for games that we thought would be ripe for doing an appropriate reinvention of. And you're absolutely right, the original game, on Game Boy Color, was an almost a template for what we now know as the survival game,' Konami creative director Richard Jones told us. 'It was very open-ended, it was very hard, there was a lot of trial and error – you really did have to bang your head against it, to actually get anywhere. But what we loved about it was the idea of kids on a desert island. 'You look on the cover of the original Game Boy Color game and there was always a boy and a girl, so there was always two kids but you only ever played a single-player game. So, one of the first thoughts was: 'How do we make this into a multiplayer game for modern audiences?'' The new Survival Kids has the same premise as the original, in the sense that it's also a Robinson Crusoe simulator, but it's not a survival game and nobody's going to be dying because they couldn't find enough coconuts. Instead, it's a co-operative puzzle game, with up to four of you stranded on a series of islands (which are actually giant turtles). There's something about collecting Harmony Stones as well, but basically you start off on one island and have to adventure across it to build a raft to get to the next. You have a little base camp you can build (and pack up to move elsewhere) where you can cook food to give you a stamina boost – which is need to move or dig up some heavier objects – and swap between various items like a fan (for producing wind), an umbrella (for gliding short distances) and a fishing rod (not just for fishing but snagging distant items and switches), whose blueprints you discover along the way. Raw materials such as wood, stone, and vines have to be mined but this is a trivial task, especially if someone else helps at the same time, to speed things up. Although if you're playing with young kids just bringing resources to the crafting box is useful busywork, that starts to become slightly reminiscent of Overcooked. These materials are often used to craft climbing nets and bridges, but you soon get onto more complex puzzles, that involve things like controlling platforms to access new areas and neutralising statues that spit projectiles at you. We never got stuck while playing but some of the puzzles did take some brainpower, which is encouraging for adult players. 'That's exactly the balance we were trying to make,' says Jones. 'We wanted the systems to be accessible, so the crafting box where everyone can contribute and throw things in, and then the item pops out. So rather than inventory management and having to go scrabbling around for loads and loads of resources we wanted to make the crafting simple and the stamina bar simple and very understandable.' 'But at the same time, you can still make puzzles challenging. The idea was never to make this something you could just breeze through. The idea was to make the systems and the gameplay easy to understand and then the challenge in the puzzle and the actual execution of it,' he adds. Although all the previous Survival Kids games were made in Japan, this reboot is by Unity – the makers of the Unity graphics engine, whose logo you will have seen before the start of many indie and AA titles. However, unlike Epic Games and their Unreal Engine, Unity has never made a game themselves before and this is their first proper foray into development. 'We have, behind the scenes, for years, helped developers who are using Unity engine to achieve what they need to. So, we've helped with performance optimisation, porting Unity across to a new platform, and this is really helpful because it allows us to production verify all new versions of Unity,' studio head and producer Andrew Dennison told us. 'We can test them on customer projects, but there's a limit to that as the project's not yours and there's maybe only a narrow window of what you're looking at. 'So the opportunity we saw, probably about three years ago, was 'How could we do something bigger?' What if, for a publisher, we built an entire game and that would let us test the breadth of the engine, and particularly if we could – which we somehow managed to do with this game – align it with a new platform launch. Because we can prove that Unity is ready for Nintendo Switch 2.' 'We met at Gamescom in 2022 and Unity were looking for a project. I was looking for an external studio to work on Konami IP. It soon became evident that we had lots of shared goals, lots of shared appetites, for what we wanted to do. We both wanted to do multiplayer co-op, social game experience with all the family – so that was how it started,' adds Jones. 'The game started off completely platform agonistic. We knew what we wanted to make, we knew our target audience, and this time, in the planning stages, the next Nintendo console was way off in the distance, we didn't know much about it. 'It wasn't until we got a little further into that, after pre-production and into the early parts of development that the release window started to solidify and that aligned with our schedule. And that was when we first sat up and started thinking seriously that we could hit the launch date with this.' Maths fans will have already worked out that that means Unity made the whole game in less than three years. Just over two, in fact, according to Dennison, who reveals that full development only started in March 2023. Compared to the five or more years that a modern AAA game can take – and the terrible cost for the developer if it's not an instant hit – and suddenly Survival Kids' modest visuals make much more sense. 'I don't have an up-to-date reference for how AAA studios are running things but I know for sure that there are economies to be had by keeping a team tight, well-organised, and what was great working with Konami – and I genuinely mean this – is there was a ticking clock,' says Dennison. 'You have this much time and that forces you to make the right decisions. We knew a window, so we knew we had to have the game done by end of '24, so we'd have enough time. And it's really useful to have those deadlines, because it forces you to make those decisions.' The game features a relatively realistic physics engine, so that if something drops in a river it will float downstream and have to be collected later, while explosive fruits can be rolled or catapulted in the air. You can play on your own – and we did for about 20 minutes as a test – and it's fine, but it's much more enjoyable when everyone is running around, trying to grab the glory for themselves and blaming every mistake on someone else. 'Some of the emergent silliness comes out of the physics. When you cut a tree down it will roll down a slope into the water when you're you're trying to grab it,' says Jones. 'It's amazing how difficult it can be for two people to carry a log.' The game can be played by up to four players online and that was simulated at the event, by playing with other journos. There's also a two-player couch co-op mode which you can play on the same console and with only one Joy-Con each. This worked great too and means you can play it co-op without needing to pay for Nintendo Switch Online or anything else. More Trending We can't say how much longevity the game has until we've played the whole thing but there are various secrets and costume unlockables, which along with the time you take to finish determine how many stars you're awarded when you complete an island, with the biggest one we played taking over 30 minutes. Although we suspect the rather bland visuals, and a price tag that seems just a tad too high, are going to be obstacles, we enjoyed our time with Survival Kids and can't wait to play it more with friends and family. In terms of gameplay our main concern now is how the game balances it's very straightforward early levels with the more complex puzzles of later on, but as long as it's a smooth segue it should be fine. You can never have enough couch co-op games and while this doesn't necessarily seem like it needed to be a Switch 2 exclusive in order to exist, it certainly does fit Nintendo's vibe, while also being something novel and different compared to the other launch titles. Formats: Nintendo Switch 2Price: £44.99Publisher: KonamiDeveloper: UnityRelease Date: 5th June 2025 Age Rating: 3 Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Games Inbox: Will Nintendo games ever come to PC? MORE: The original Switch is still a better option than the Switch 2 – Reader's Feature MORE: Nintendo is bringing one of its exclusive games to PC claims Microsoft website
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
On-the-run convict murdered grandmother Anita Rose in 'brutal' attack as she walked dog before she was found with his boot marks on her face, court told
An on-the-run convict who was living 'off-grid' to avoid being recalled to prison killed a grandmother out walking her dog in a 'vicious and brutal attack', a court heard today. Anita Rose, 57, was subjected to 'numerous kicks, stamps and blows' by Roy Barclay, 56, whose semen was found on her jacket, jurors were told. Opening the case, prosecutor Christopher Paxton KC said mother-of-six Ms Rose left her home in Brantham, Suffolk, to walk her springer spaniel, Bruce, on July 24 last year. She was found by passers-by on a footpath beside a sewage works but died four days later. 'After she left home and before 6.25 that morning, Anita Rose was subject to a vicious and brutal attack with numerous kicks, stamps and blows being delivered to her face, head and body,' Mr Paxton told Ipswich Crown Court. 'Found by passers-by, help was called for but on July 28 Anita Rose died in Addenbrooke's Hospital [in Cambridge ] from the injuries she received.' 'No eyewitnesses saw the incident', Mr Paxton told jurors, adding: 'You will hear that Roy Barclay had no fixed address and lived mostly in the countryside, wandering the fields and lanes, sleeping in various makeshift camps. 'He lived off-grid because, for two years, Roy Barclay had been unlawfully at large. 'He had been on the run trying to avoid the police and authorities to try and avoid being recalled back to prison.' The prosecutor said Mr Rose - who lived with her partner Richard Jones in the village – wore a distinctive pink jacket on the day she was attacked and it was later found at one of Barclay's makeshift camps. The defendant kept the garment 'as a trophy' and it had his 'semen on the neckline'. Mr Paxton added Barclay's walking boots, which 'amounted to the murder weapon', were found at the same camp. 'I say the boots are the murder weapon because the pathologist, and additionally the neuropathologist, will tell you the injuries Anita Rose sustained are consistent with kicking and stamping,' the barrister said. 'The level of trauma to Anita's brain is akin to that seen following road traffic accidents, such was the force of Roy Barclay's attack.' Ms Rose's phone case was also found at the camp and her Samsung earbuds were located at a different hideaway Barclay used under the Orwell Bridge near Ipswich, it is claimed. A lock-picking kit was also discovered there, along with pairs of women's underwear – although none of them belonged to Ms Rose, Mr Paxton said. A series of notes on the calendar of his phone showed Barclay had 'celebrated' anniversary dates of the attack on July 24, Mr Paxton said. The date of September 3 - six weeks afterwards - stated '6 weeks'. Other entries for September 18, October 9 and October 16, respectively stated '8 weeks', '11 weeks' and '12 weeks' with the final entry adding the word 'Court?'. Mr Paxton added: 'Roy Barclay was getting sloppy. But perhaps, in his arrogance, having evaded the police and authorities for two years, he felt he was untouchable. That, quite literally, he could get away with murder.' Barclay tried to leave a false trail of evidence by dumping Ms Rose's mobile phone a few days after the attack in a seating area in Ipswich town centre, the court heard. He did so 'no doubt hoping it to be found, as it was, and hoping that it would be switched on'. The phone was picked up by a couple who decided to try and sell it and were immediately arrested by the police, jurors were told. Mr Paxton added Barclay appeared to have taken the phone to avoid the chance of her calling for help but had no plans to sell it himself as he had 'several thousand pounds in a bank account'. The barrister claimed the defendant, who 'carries dog biscuits with him and is a dog lover', tied the dog lead around Ms Rose's leg 'to stop Bruce running off'. 'Cunning and resourceful' Barclay is said to have made various internet searches after the attack, including 'How are outside objects swabbed for DNA?' and 'Can barbed wire be swabbed for DNA?'. Further internet searches about the attack in the months after the murder were made so he could 'follow the twists and turns of the police investigation on media websites. 'He did so because he had a vested interest in knowing what the police were up to, what that might signal to him, whether his time was up or not,' Mr Paxton said. The court was told when the defendant was eventually arrested by police, he answered 'no comment' to many of the questions he was asked. Instead, he provided a prepared statement denying any involvement in Ms Rose's death and insisting he would 'not be forensically' linked to it. Ms Rose was filmed by a doorbell camera when she set off from home on the fateful walk. She is thought to have walked more than three miles on a network of tracks and paths before being attacked. Barclay, who wore glasses, a grey prison-issue tracksuit and has a grey beard and long, thinning grey hair, listened to proceedings from the secure dock of the court. He denies murder. Relatives of Ms Rose listened from the public gallery. The trial, which is due to last eight weeks, continues.
