A young man who said he was going to kill a 17-year-old boy has told a court he was being ''a bit creative'' with his words and wanted to sound dangerous in front of his friends.
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Alexander Raymond Iacuone, 23, is one of three young men on trial in the ACT Supreme Court for plotting to kill the teenager in November 2008, following a falling out.
The trio discussed plans to kill the teenager using a baseball bat, and then lined the boot of a car with a shower curtain to prevent his blood from seeping out into the vehicle.
They also obtained a shovel and mattock to help bury the body.
The trio then tricked the victim into meeting them at about 12.30am and chased him through bush at Tuggeranong.
Iacuone eventually confronted him, and they wrestled and fought, before the victim was able to escape to safety.
But Iacuone, who began giving evidence to the court on Tuesday, said he had never intended to kill the teenager.
He said he feared that the victim was trying to have him bashed, and thought he needed to get to him first.
''I wanted to strike out at him before he could strike out at me. I wanted to scare him pretty good,'' Iacuone told the court.
Before the bushland confrontation, he had told the other two accused - Alexander James Duffy, 24, and a then 17-year-old who cannot be named - that he wanted to kill the teenager.
They discussed the plan before preparing the car for a body and obtaining tools for the burial.
But Iacuone told the court he just wanted to sound ''dangerous'' in front of Duffy, whom he didn't know well. He said he became ''a bit creative'' with his words, referring to his use of the word ''kill'', but said he never had any intention of going through with the murder.
Iacuone said he was too scared to even fight the victim on his own.
''That's why I kept roping more and more people into it and it just got way out of hand,'' he said.
Iacuone got the victim into a headlock, and the third, unidentified accused began hitting both of them with the baseball bat to break up the fight, the court heard.
As they wrestled, the pair rolled down a spillway into water, and the victim ran off into shrubs.
He was found by a nearby resident and the police were called. The three accused and two others inside their car were pulled over by police.
Earlier on Tuesday, the third, unidentified accused gave evidence that he had been just ''going with the flow'' as his friends made plans to kill the teenager.
He said he had pulled Iacuone aside and asked him how far he was going to go. Iacuone had assured him that no one was going to get hurt.
The trial continues on Wednesday before Justice John Burns.
