Student ‘ killed by butcher prowling streets for a victim’
Tragic Libby, 21, ‘raped and dumped in the river’
A FATHER raped and murdered an undergraduate after cruising a city’s student district at night ‘ looking for an opportunity’, a court heard yesterday.
Pawel relowicz, 26, was driving when he is said to have spotted Libby Squire sitting on the pavement near a main road in Hull in February 2019.
The 21-year-old – who was drunk and vulnerable – got into the stranger’s car and was taken to playing fields nearby where the Polish butcher allegedly raped and killed her. The fatherof-two dumped her body into the river, Sheffield Crown Court was told.
Prosecutor richard Wright QC said relowicz ‘drove her away from what would have been a place of safety’ to a remote spot he was familiar with.
The jury heard that he caused her death during an ‘act of sexual violence, which culminated in his putting her, dead or dying, into the cold waters of the river Hull that bordered the edge of that playing field’.
Police launched an investigation and recovered her body almost seven weeks later from the Humber Estuary.
Libby was in a drunken state that night and had fallen over repeatedly. Several members of the public tried to help her but she reportedly refused their assistance. relowicz, who lived in Hull, denies raping and murdering the student on February 1, 2019.
Mr Wright said Libby, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, was studying philosophy at Hull University and lived in a shared student house. on the evening of January 31, she went out with a group of friends on a freezing cold night. She had been drinking wine and the group walked to a nightclub in town. However, Libby was refused entry because she was reportedly very drunk. Friends put her in a taxi, which was paid for in advance, and sent her home at around 11.30pm.
But instead of getting in the taxi, she wandered up the road and landed ‘ face first on the ground’ near a group of young men, said Mr Wright.
She then walked towards the main road and collapsed out side another student house and the residents invited her inside. She appeared drunk and upset but wanted to go home, the court heard.
Libby dropped her keys in front of that house, where they were later found by police, and walked off again.
once on the main road, another member of the public asked her if she was okay.
Two men driving back after a darts match later spotted the student lying in the snow and offered to take her home but ‘were unable to understand what Libby was saying’.
Mr Wright added: ‘ In her drunken state she started to become verbally aggressive.
‘In the end the men decided to give up on her and drove away.’ Another potential Good Samaritan saw her minutes later crying next to a bus stop saying she wanted to go home. The last sighting was by the manager of a Sainsbury’s store who was locking up just after midnight. He saw Libby sat on the pavement shouting towards a vehicle, ‘Don’t leave me.’
That is when relowicz, who lived nearby and was signed off sick from work that day, allegedly pounced.
Mr Wright told the court that relowicz was ‘cruising around the student area in his car... looking for an opportunity to present itself’.
He said Libby was out on a ‘freezing cold night’ and was ‘not dressed for the weather’, adding: ‘ She was drunk, she was likely hypothermic and she was in deep distress.
‘She had lost her house keys, she was crying, she had fallen repeatedly to the floor as she tried to walk and she was extremely vulnerable.’
Police studied hundreds of hours of CCTV footage and saw the student had come into contact with relowicz that night.
Detectives tracked where his Vauxhall Astra car went that night, the court heard.
Mr Wright said the footage – played to the jury – showed that relowicz went down to the playing fields for 12 minutes at around 9.15pm that evening. He returned later to attack his victim, the court was told.
relowicz showed no emotion during yesterday’s proceedings and only took off his mask to identify himself and enter not guilty pleas.
The case continues.
‘She was extremely vulnerable’