STUDENT Luke Campbell was fatally stabbed when he tried to grapple with an attacker who was carrying a knife, a court heard yesterday.

The jury at Winchester Crown Court was told by Larbi Mohamed, 21, one of the three south London drug dealers who deny murder, Luke appeared to “jump at or bear hug” Delaine Brown, 22.

Mohamed was waiting in a Mercedes nearby but was told by the other defendant, Saeed Alkadir, 22, he watched Luke “step back or pull away” after he ran at Brown.

When the trio were back in the car, Mohamed said he then saw a large knife with blood on it tucked inside Brown’s hoodie.

Luke’s dead body was discovered in the garden of a house on St Clements Road, Boscombe, the following morning.

Mohamed told the court he sensed something was not right as the atmosphere in the car was “wrong” and Brown looked “panicked”.

The gang, who had been in Boscombe dealing drugs in November last year, raced to the flat of Nicola Egan to return the knife Brown had borrowed, then fled town.

But Mohamed repeatedly denied Luke’s death had been planned and that it was a revenge attack for an altercation the previous day in which he was knifed.

CCTV showed the Mercedes circling the area in the lead up to the stabbing but Mohamed insisted they were looking for drug users, not Luke or his friends.

“I had nothing against Luke,” he said.

The trial continues.