Cody Fisher death: Two jailed for life for murdering Birmingham footballer in Boxing Day nightclub stabbing

Two men have been jailed for life for the murder of footballer Cody Fisher, who was stabbed to death inside a Birmingham nightclub on Boxing Day in 2022. Remy Gordon, 23, and Kami Carpenter, 22, had blamed each other for stabbing the 23-year-old former Birmingham City academy player, who died at the scene from a chest wound.

However, both were found guilty of his murder last month while a third defendant, Reegan Anderson, 19, was cleared. Gordon and Anderson 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 two days earlier. 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.

On Monday, Judge Paul Farrer KC jailed Gordon and Carpenter, of Owens Croft, Kings Norton, for a minimum of 26 and 25 years respectively 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.

She said: “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 – 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 court room but was in the building during the sentencing hearing, was also read out in which she said it was “too much for a mother to bear” to hear the defendants’ “abhorrent lies”.

Paying tribute to her son, her statement said: “Since this horrendous day I feel that my own life has ended, it is as though I too was stabbed straight through the heart. 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.”

The court heard how Cody had accidentally bumped into Gordon at Popworld in Solihull and the pair exchanged a few words. But Gordon refused to forget the encounter, and set about trying to identify Cody from social media images he found of him on other nights out.

He learned Cody’s name, and that he was likely to be at the Crane nightclub on Adderley Street in Digbeth on Boxing Day. Just before midnight on Boxing Day, Cody was surrounded before being headbutted, punched and kicked. He was stabbed once in the chest and died from the wound at the scene.

A major investigation was launched, with officers spending hundreds of hours reviewing CCTV footage from the Crane, as well as examining social media messaging. It identified Gordon, as well as Kami Carpenter and Reegan Anderson as being present on the night.