A security guard was battered to death in a row with a gang of Kosovan teenagers, a court heard.

Vincent Swift, 27, who worked at HMV in North End, Croydon, was beaten around the head with a 5ft wooden stake in the street fight and suffered fatal brain damage, the Old Bailey heard.

He was attacked by the eastern European gang after he and his younger brother Richard Swift, 19, and friend Guy Fitch, 19, taunted and challenged them with weapons.

Witnesses heard them swear at the gang then tell them to go "back to your own country".

James Curtis, QC, prosecuting, suggested that was one of the reasons the fight started on September 28 last year.

He said: "Three youths armed themselves with a stick and or a metal bar and or a long torch, and keys on a chain, and set off down their road to challenge the Kosovans."

But he said the eastern Europeans "grossly over-reacted" to the situation, gathering an array of weapons.

Gentian Molla, 18, Furtherfield Close, Thornton Heath, and a 16-year-old boy, also from Thornton Heath, are said to have armed themselves with a kitchen knife, a wooden stake used to support trees and a steering lock.

"They delivered such a severe and sustained beating to one of them that they killed him. The fact that the local youths armed themselves first and started threatening violence towards them provides the defendants no defence."

The court heard that Vincent Swift was hit three or four times round the head with a piece of wood described by a witness as "a trunk".

After the attack Mr Swift, of Harcourt Road, Thornton Heath, was taken to hospital with brain damage and later died.

Molla, and the 16-year-old, who cannot be named, deny murder and violent disorder. Kosovans Daniel Bushati, 26, of Norfolk Road, Thornton Heath, and a 17-year-old, from west London, are also accused of taking part in the fight.

Next to them in the dock are Richard Swift, of Harcourt Road, Thornton Heath, and Fitch, of Hughes Walk, West Croydon, who are said to have been fighting on the victim's side.

All four deny violent disorder. The trial continues.