A PENSIONER has gone on trial accused of an armed robbery 26 years ago.
Barrie Rhodes is alleged to have been one of the two men who walked into Jeanian Jewellers with a sawn-off shotgun in Osmaston Road, Derby, on July 10, 1986.
The weapon was pointed at the head of a woman working in the wholesalers but they ran off empty-handed when her husband set off the alarm.
Rhodes, 65, was arrested in November 2011 after a match was found between his fingerprint and marks left at the crime scene, which had been uploaded to a national database in the last decade.
Rhodes, of Monument Lane, Ironville, told a jury at Nottingham Crown Court on Thursday that he had "definitely not" committed the crime and did not know who had.
