On the first day of an expected five-day trial in which five boys are denying charges of perverting the course of justice, former Solicitor General Howard Sharp QC has said that the Crown’s case is that the boys were desperate to avoid having police go to the house where he had spent the night.

He said that the boys and Morgan had been to a party the night before, on the evening of 4 July, and that Morgan had consumed Morphine, Codeine and Etizolam, and needed help to walk back to the house where they stayed.

He slept in the garage overnight while the rest of the boys slept upstairs – when one of them checked on him at around 6 am on the morning of 5 July he had appeared to be sleeping, but when he was checked again at 9.15 am, there was blood and saliva coming out of his mouth and he had slipped into unconsciousness.

Drugs including ecstasy and Etizolam – a former “legal high” – were found in the house, which was owned by the parents of one of the boys. A USB stick attached to the computer of the boy was also found to contain four indecent images of children.

Advocate Sharp said that when Morgan had been checked at 9.15 am, it was completely obvious that he needed urgent medical treatment.

He said: “Morgan was lying on the garage floor. He was unconscious, there was blood and saliva coming out of his mouth, his airway was blocked, he either had a very weak pulse or no discernible pulse at all. Morgan’s condition was critical and obviously so.

“An ambulance was urgently required.

“[Defendant One] decided not to call the emergency services. We say that he feared, quite correctly, that calling an ambulance would trigger a chain of events that would result in the police attending his family home and searching the property.”

Instead of calling the ambulance, three of the boys – some of whom were not yet dressed – picked up Morgan and carried him out of the house and around 160 yards down the road. But they were stopped by two women, one who was out running and one who was walking her dog.

The two women challenged the boys, and one of the women called an ambulance when she saw the condition that Morgan was in.

The emergency services arrived – the court was shown video footage from a camera on the front of the ambulance – and they started to question the boys, but Advocate Sharp said that even then, they were still not given honest answers.

Advocate Sharp said: “They were asked questions and as you might imagine, particularly by the paramedics, but even there they were all treated to unhelpful, vague and evasive answers that came nowhere near providing the sort of full and frank information that was required.

“And those answers had the underlying objective to prevent any link being made between Morgan and [the house]. No-one could apparently know that Morgan had spent the night at [the house] and that explains the answers that all of these people were given that morning.”

Because the Court proceedings have been opened, nothing that might lead to the identification of the defendants can be reported.

The case continues.