‘Frantic screams... then a man ran from the scene’
As court told butcher is ‘billion times likely’ to be Libby’s killer, harrowing words of witness...
a WITNESS heard chilling screams and saw a young man running in the area where student Libby Squire had been taken by a predatory sex offender, a court was told yesterday.
Jurors were told the incident took place during a seven- and- a- half f minute window in which Pawel Relowicz was parked near playing fields where he is alleged to have raped and murdered the 21-year-old before dumping her in a river.
Her body was not recovered from the Humber estuary for almost seven weeks, by which time it was difficult to ascertain the cause of death.
But a DNa profile matching Relowicz’s was found on Libby, Sheffield Crown Court was told.
Richard Wright QC, prosecuting, said it was ‘one billion times more likely that the DNa ... is the defendant’s than ... from another person unrelated to him’.
The court was also told that during the 18 months leading up to Libby’s disappearance in February 2019, Relowicz – a 26-year-old Polish butcher – committed nine sexually-motivated offences in the student area of Hull.
He has already admitted the charges, which include watching women through windows in a state of undress, having sex or showering, as well as burgling homes to steal intimate possessions.
In January 2019, Relowicz was seen by two women performing a sex act in public view, and he committed a similar sex act on a later date in the street where Libby lived.
Just days before she vanished, Relowicz broke into a student house and stole underwear and intimate possessions.
Mr Wright told the jury that Relowicz was a man ‘who was driven to commit sexually motivated offences against young women and who was undeterred by them seeing him or challenging him’.
The court has already heard how the defendant had been cruising the Hull’s student district in his car late at night ‘looking for an opportunity’.
Yesterday the jury watched CCTV that Mr Wright said showed Relowicz effectively stalking Libby from the ‘shadows’ at about midnight and
‘Broke in and stole underwear’
then crossing the road to ‘intercept’ her. CCTV also showed ‘toing and froing’ between them, which ended with Libby, who was drunk, getting in his car.
Mr Wright said it wasn’t known if she was ‘forced into the vehicle’ or ‘persuaded’.
However, something caused her to drop her gold watch, which was found at the scene.
The car parked near playing fields. Both got out but only Relowicz returned to the vehicle, it was alleged. Sam alford, who lived in a house overlooking the fields, woke and saw on his phone that it was 12.14am.
He said that shortly afterwards he heard a series of screams from a woman coming from the playing fields. ‘Mr alford recalls them as frantic screams, they had urgency and depth,’ Mr Wright said.
a few minutes after the last scream the witness saw a man ‘emerging from the darkness... running’, the court heard. CCTV showed Relowicz was back home by 12.23am on February 1, 2019. But the court was told he left home again at 2.22am and drove down again to the playing fields.
Relowicz, who is married with two children, told police he had acted as a Good Samaritan when he came across Libby. He remained silent when confronted by the DNa finding.
Relowicz, of Hull, denies raping and murdering Libby, from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. The trial continues.