An alleged killer has denied confessing to “shanking” an innocent teenager in a botched revenge attack in court yesterday.

Nugent Rowe, 29, is said to have been recruited by media mogul Chris Nathaniel to join a mob that murdered Danny O’Shea, 18 yards from his home on Butchers Road, Custom House on December 2, 2011.

Prosecutors claim the attack was organised after Nathaniel’s business partner Paul Boadi was robbed of his BlackBerry by youths.

One of the eight men allegedly recruited, 35-year-old Andrew Johnson, has told the Old Bailey Rowe confessed to the stabbing as they drove away from the scene in a minibus.

Rowe denied the accusation.

He added: “I heard Paul Johnson say one of the youths got shanked. It means stabbed.

“He wasn’t saying it to anyone in particular - he just said it to make everyone hear what actually happened.

“No one on that minibus admitted they stabbed anyone.”

The mob also allegedly included Kevin Richards, 33, O’Neil Wareham, 30, Ferron Perue, 24, David Hylton, 47, and Scott Marius, 45.

He said later that night they all read psalms from a Bible together in the living room.

Rowe admitted he lied to the police but pleaded not guilty to murder.

Boadi and Nathaniel, both of Poplar; Marius, of Maida Vale; Paul Johnson, of Harrow; Richards of Willesden; Wareham, of Harrow; Andrew Johnson, of Harrow; Perue, of Harrow; Rowe, of Pinner; and Hylton, of Bloomsbury, all deny murder and conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm.

The trial continues.