Two men have been jailed for life for murdering footballer Cody Fisher in a Birmingham nightclub knife attack on Boxing Day 2022.
Remy Gordon and Kami Carpenter were on Monday afternoon jailed at Birmingham Crown Court for life with a minimum term of 26 and 25 years respectively.
Mr Fisher, a 23-year-old former Birmingham City academy player, died from a chest wound at the scene of the attack.
Gordon and Carpenter were found guilty of his murder last month, while a third defendant, 19-year-old Reegan Anderson, was cleared.
The pair were also found guilty of affray in relation to a “targeted” attack on a friend of Mr Fisher’s immediately after the stabbing, which saw him chased across the dancefloor and kicked as he lay “defenceless” on the ground.
A 10-week trial was told Mr Fisher was attacked with a weapon smuggled through security into Digbeth’s Crane nightclub before a pre-planned “act of retribution” for a minor incident that had happened two days earlier, at another nightclub.
Jurors at Birmingham Crown Court were told Gordon, of Cofton Park Drive, Birmingham, orchestrated the “awful revenge” after Mr Fisher made brief “unavoidable” contact with his back while leaving a packed club in Solihull on Christmas Eve.
Judge Paul Farrer KC jailed Gordon and Carpenter, of Owens Croft, Kings Norton, for life on Monday.
In a statement read out in court, Mr Fisher’s girlfriend Jessica Chatwin, who was with him the night he was killed, said her world “shattered” as her boyfriend took his last breaths in her arms.
“Seconds before that moment I remember turning around and looking at Cody behind me and he gave me the biggest smile full of love and happiness,” she said. “Now I question if that was his goodbye.
“The next time I turned around he was surrounded by those attacking him and I watched him fall to the floor, then reality struck that he had been fatally stabbed.
“My life stopped that day, I live each day with enormous pain, loneliness and sadness.
“I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with Cody. Now I have to face the world without his love and guidance, something he always showed me while we were together.
“He was my strength in every situation and now I have to face it all alone.”
A statement from Mr Fisher’s mother Tracey, who did not enter the courtroom but was in the building during the sentencing hearing, was also read out. It said hearing the defendants’ “abhorrent lies” was “too much for a mother to bear”.
“Since this horrendous day I feel that my own life has ended, it is as though I too was stabbed straight through the heart,” her statement added.
“I have seen myself go from the happiest, outgoing person, to fighting the hell out of just getting through each and every horrendous, never-ending day in the abhorrent knowledge that my youngest son, my best friend, is never coming home to sleep in his bedroom - the room that I still cannot enter even to this day.
“I instilled in Cody from a young boy that he must stick up for himself and don’t let anyone bully him.
“I told him that sad, weak individuals do exist in our society and they ruin lives – how ironic and saddening that this is exactly what happened to Cody.
“He was only doing what his mum told him to do and I think about this every day, but you never expect your child to be murdered.”
Prosecutor Michael Duck KC told the court it was an “orchestrated attack” on Mr Fisher and Gordon was later captured on CCTV in a pizza takeaway restaurant “re-enacting the attack… and laughing while he did so”.
He said the pair had shown no remorse for what they had done and had sought to evade capture, with Gordon attempting to flee to Jamaica and Carpenter to London, before their arrests.
Opening the case in January, Mr Duck told jurors Mr Fisher was stabbed in the chest, penetrating a valve in his heart, and was pronounced dead at the scene, while a close friend of the victim was chased and kicked but managed to get to his feet and escape.
Mr Duck said it was not a matter of “chance” or a “flash of temper” that Mr Fisher was attacked, rather a “planned act of retribution” after a minor incident at Popworld nightclub in Solihull around 48 hours before he was killed.
As Mr Fisher and his friend were making their way towards the club’s exit, there was a “brief coming together” with Gordon, Mr Duck said.
He said: “Necessarily they had to move through a crowd of people. Tragically, amongst that crowd was Remy Gordon.
“There was a brief contact between Cody Fisher and Remy Gordon’s back it seems.
“Cody Fisher it seems did little more than touch Remy Gordon’s back. Remy Gordon was looking for an argument with somebody.”
Referring to social media messages subsequently sent by Gordon, Mr Duck told the jury: “It’s plain from evidence which has been obtained that rather than Mr Gordon simply acknowledging there had been no malice…he decided to challenge Cody Fisher.”
Mr Fisher was not prepared to apologise, having done nothing wrong and been threatened with violence, the court heard, and left the club with his friend.
Mr Duck said of Gordon: “He was set on retribution that ultimately was to lead to the loss of Cody Fisher’s young life in the Crane nightclub.
“The strength of his resentment can be gleaned from messages sent within about 50 minutes of the encounter in Popworld.
“He felt rather embarrassed and frustrated that he had been unable to intimidate a member of the public.”
Gordon sent messages on Snapchat to friends around 45 minutes after the initial incident, appealing for help to identify a photograph showing Mr Fisher and threatening to “shank him up”.
Mr Fisher, a former Birmingham City academy member who also played for Stratford Town and Bromsgrove Sporting, died at the scene of the stabbing.
Mobile phone footage of Mr Fisher lying on the floor after he was stabbed in the chest and leg was shown to the court, as well as further film which captured part of the attack on his friend.
After the footage was shown to the jury, Mr Duck held up the “ferocious” knife, used to kill Mr Fisher – contained in a see-through plastic box – so the jury could see its size.
Disclosing what he described as “one of the appalling details of the case”, Mr Duck said the weapon “was still embedded in his chest as he lay on the ground”, and was recovered by medics as they tried to save Mr Fisher.
Jurors were also shown CCTV images of the three defendants arriving at the Crane club and copies of Snapchat messages sent between Gordon and Carpenter in the hours before they arrived there.
One message referred to a “bally” and another asked “can I get a shank in there”.
Another message – which showed Gordon’s “sinister intention” – said he was “looking to snuff someone”.
Mr Duck said: “Mr Gordon was intending to wear a disguise. He was debating which weapons to take into the premises. And he was intending to revisit the events of Christmas Eve with Mr Fisher.”
The court was also told a mutual friend of one of the defendants and Mr Fisher had suggested that he and the semi-professional footballer leave the Crane nightclub due to Gordon’s presence at the venue.
“Cody Fisher indicated that he was not prepared to leave the premises and be intimidated in that way,” Mr Duck said.
