Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Libby’s screams ‘as uni prowler struck’
Accused ‘may have killed student to silence her after rape at playing field’
LIBBY Squire’s frantic screams were heard as she was raped in a playing field, a jury has been told.
Pawel Relowicz, on trial for her alleged rape and murder, had allegedly picked her up in his car and driven her there after finding her drunk and vulnerable as he prowled the streets at night.
A man was seen “emerging from the darkness” running from the remote spot.
Footage of the site was on a drone later found by police at Relowicz’s home. Prosecutors said he had been “flying the drone over it a couple of days earlier”.
The Polish-born butcher is accused of raping then murdering the Hull University philosophy student before dumping her “dead or dying” in a freezing river.
Libby’s body was found two months later in the Humber Estuary. Dad-of-two
Relowicz, 26, had already admitted nine sexually motivated crimes in the year before Libby went missing in January 2019, the jury heard. Prosecutor Richard Wright Q C sai d they included an indecent act in public. Footage shows he committed the same offence again on the night Libby went missing.
Mr Wright said Relowicz had been “prowling the streets... in order to commit opportunistic sexual offences and the rape of Libby was such an offence”.
He added: “His purpose was to rape her and to use whatever force was necessary to achieve that end, to silence her screams and to escape detection.”
Yesterday the jury was shown CCTV images of Libby when she was last seen alive, getting into Relowicz’s Vauxhall Astra. Her dad, Russell, was unable to watch and left the public gallery. Mr Wright said: “Relowicz was not acting as a good Samaritan, we suggest.”
He added: “Whether Libby was forced into the vehicle, an act that would we suggest not have been difficult given her condition at thi s point, or whether she was persuaded to enter it on the promise of some assistance... may never be clear from the CCTV footage.”
The car was driven to Oak Road playing fields where “there is no doubt that he and Libby got out of the vehicle and only the defendant returned to it”, he said. Bodily f luid found on Libby was a “billion-to-one match” with Relowicz, the jury was told.
A book of student accommodation in Hull was found in Relowicz’s desk after he was arrested. In his car boot, police found a pink holdall of “trophies” taken in a series of sexually motivated burglaries in the student area of the city.
Libby’s mum Lisa Squire said the student had been at her happiest ever before she had gone missing.
In a statement read to Sheffield crown court, the neonatal nurse told of mental health problems her daughter had faced as a teenager but said she had been coping much better. She added: “She was planning her future and was in the best place in her life she had ever been.”
The trial continues.
He’d been prowling the streets to commit sexual offences RICHARD WRIGHT QC PROSECUTOR IN COURT