A young mother described as a ‘mini-Beyonce’ by friends was ‘strangled to death with a skipping rope in her bed’ by her boyfriend in a ‘brutal, merciless and sustained attack’, a court has heard.
Police found the body of children’s nursery nurse N’Taya Elliott-Cleverley, 20, in a flat she shared with her partner Nigel Diakite in Prince Alfred Road, Wavertree, Liverpool on January 29 last year.
Diakite, also known as Mohammed Diakite, was charged with her murder the following day.
A preliminary post-mortem examination stated the cause of Miss Elliott-Cleverley’s death was ‘mechanical asphyxiation’.
Diakite, 19, denies her murder and the trial at Liverpool Crown Court is estimated to last two weeks.
Ian Unsworth QC, prosecuting, told the jury: ‘In the early hours of the last Friday of January last year, N’Taya Elliott-Cleverley, a 20-year-old young mother from Liverpool, was killed in her bed in her Wavertree home.
Police found the body of children’s nursery nurse N’Taya Elliott-Cleverley (left) in her flat in Prince Alfred Road, Wavertree, Liverpool on January 29 last year. Nigel Diakite (right) of Prince Alfred Road was charged with her murder the following day
Police at a house on Prince Alfred Road, Wavertree, in a murder probe, January 29, 2021
‘Her young life came to an end in the most violent manner. N’Taya was the victim of a brutal, merciless and sustained attack.
‘She was restrained, suffered multiple blows to her face, and was strangled not only by a hand or hands, but also by a ligature such as a rope. It is also likely that the perpetrator obstructed her airways, perhaps using a hand or pillow.
‘The perpetrator was the defendant, who was the partner to N’Taya Cleverley. There is overwhelming evidence that he killed her.’
Mr Unsworth said Diakite and Miss Elliott-Cleverley met in Liverpool sometime in 2019.
The prosecutor alleged that the defendant told her how he had fled from the Ivory Coast in Africa, and that she and others knew him as Nigel.
At the time of the incident, Diakite was receiving assistance from a support worker in relation to his immigration application.
Mr Unsworth says their relationship was ‘not always a smooth one’.
Police at a house on Prince Alfred Road, Wavertree, in a murder probe, January 29, 2021
In early 2020, Miss Elliott-Cleverley fell pregnant by the defendant and gave birth to their daughter at Liverpool Women’s Hospital on September 22 that year. At the time of her death, the child was just four months old.
‘As you will hear she [the baby] was in the very room at the time when her father killed her mother,’ the prosecutor told the court.
Mr Unsworth went on: ‘During the course of the police search of the property, a blood-stained skipping rope was found concealed beneath a bin bag.’
Showing the jury the skipping rope, he said: ‘The skipping rope had a handle missing. It had one on. The other was missing.
‘The missing handle was found on the floor behind the couch. That was examined and that was found to contain the DNA of the defendant and N’Taya.’
He added: ‘We understand members of the jury, that it will be suggested by the defendant, that he had been skipping immediately prior to the events that bring us here.
‘Thus it will be suggested that he can remember that but not how it came to have N’Taya’s blood upon it, or how it came to be where it was.’
The trial continues.
