A 15-year-old girl recruited a gang of “teenage vigilantes” to lure a man to his death in the mistaken belief that he was a paedophile, a court heard.

Lorry driver Darren Kelly, 42, from Basildon in Essex, was stabbed to death near his home in nearby Pitsea on 20 October last year.

Four people – including the girl, who is now 16 – are standing trial at Chelmsford crown court after pleading not guilty to murder.

Opening the trial, prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC described how the girl had launched a “personal campaign” against paedophiles. She had previously arranged to meet two men she had found online in the hope they would be arrested.

By the time she spoke to Kelly, using the anonymous messaging app Whisper, she had “lost faith” in the police and court system, Aylett said. She arranged to meet him before telling her friends he was a paedophile and they plotted to ambush and attack him, he added.

Describing the case as being “as disturbing as it is extraordinary”, Aylett said there was no evidence Kelly was interested in under-age girls. “In fact, there is plenty of evidence to suggest precisely the opposite,” he added.

Aylett said: “The girl instigated this attack by forming a group of teenage vigilantes in order to attack a 42-year-old man that she had met online.

“She had told the others that the man was a paedophile and as a result he was punched, kicked and then stabbed to death in the street.”

After the earlier incidents with two men, aged 23 and 67, who she met on Facebook, officers asked her why she had arranged to meet them.

She told officers: “Because they’re perverts and I don’t think perverts should be around and I don’t see anybody else doing anything about it.”

Chris Carroll, 20, of Pitsea, along with two 17-year-old boys and the girl, all deny murder. The teenagers cannot be named for legal reasons.

The trial continues.

