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An A-level student from Finsbury Park who tried to gatecrash a house party was stabbed to death by the host of the celebration, a court has heard.

Jemal Williams, 20, has gone on trial at the Old Bailey for the knife murder of Shaquan Sammy Plummer, 17, in Winchmore Hill, Enfield, where a party was being held on January 30 of last year.

As the case opened on Tuesday, the court heard how Mr Williams – who denies murder – was throwing a party with his sister that night.

Shaquan did not know anyone at the party but arrived with two friends who knew the accused.

Mr Williams refused them entry because he did not recognise Shaquan, telling the three boys: “You’ve got five seconds to get away from my door.”

Giving evidence from behind a screen, one of the victim’s friends said Mr Williams appeared “intoxicated but in control”. The host was said to have become angry with the friends the teenager had arrived with, asking: “Why are you bringing next man [strangers] to my house?”

Shaquan, upon being refused entry, said: “What’s this guy’s problem?”, before adding “It’s cool” and walking away from the house, the witness said.

Mr Williams then went back inside the house, only to return moments later.

The court heard that he followed Shaquan and his friends outside and ran past the others towards the 17-year-old, who was furthest ahead.

“Jemal went to speak to Shaquan, asking him what’s in his shopping bag. He demanded that Shaq give him the bag,” the teenager told the jury, adding that Shaquan refused to hand over the bag which contained a soft drink and chocolate.

“Shaq has turned around and they’re facing each other, then Jemal lunged at him,” he said. “I thought Jemal has given him a real hard one [punch] to the chest. [But moments later] I could see that under his jumper he [Shaquan] had a dark patch [of blood].”

After the alleged attack, Mr Williams told Shaquan’s other friend: “Anything that happens is on you,” before he disappeared, the court heard.

Paramedics fought to save Shaquan after he collapsed on the pavement, but he died soon after at the Royal Free Hospital. A post-mortem examination found that he died as a result of a single stab wound to the chest.

Prosecuting barrister Aftab Jafferjee, QC, told jurors: “This case presents a bleak portrayal of teenage life in London, where the response to a most trivial confrontation in a residential street is to produce a knife and use it.”

Following the stabbing, Mr Jafferjee added, an “overwhelming wall of silence” descended on the people who witnessed the attack, none of whom came forward with information about who stabbed Shaquan for many months.

“There was a persuasive combination of not wanting to be known as a grass, a mistrust of police in some parts of our society – perhaps with some just­ification – and a fear of the conse­quences of having seen what this defendant was capable of doing,” the barrister told the jury.

Asked why he had initially told police he did not know the identity of the alleged assailant, or how the attack took place, Shaquan’s friend replied: “I didn’t want to name names, I was more angry. At that time, when the police came to the scene they had annoyed me, they had just arrested me, it got on my nerves.

“I didn’t have any intentions of talking to them.”

However, he changed his story in October of last year, the court heard. He named Mr Williams as the attacker, who was subsequently re-arrested and charged with murder. The witness, who lived close the defendant’s house, was rehoused two months later.

Known to his family as “Nung”, and to his friends as “Shaq”, the victim, whose favourite subject was maths, attended the LaSwap sixth-form consortium in Camden.

Hundreds of people attended Shaquan’s funeral last year, including Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Konig, the trauma surgeon who performed open-heart surgery on him but was unable to save the teenager.

The trial, which is expected to last two weeks, continues.