‘Then I heard the screams again. They sounded like desperation’
WITNESS TELLS MURDER TRIAL HE HEARD SCREAMING LASTING ‘UP TO SEVEN MINUTES’ FROM PARK ON NIGHT LIBBY WENT MISSING
SCREAMS of desperation that lasted up to seven minutes were heard coming from Oak Road playing fields on the night murdered Hull student Libby Squire disappeared, a trial against her alleged killer Pawel Relowicz has heard.
Relowicz, 26, of Raglan Street, is accused of taking 21-year-old Libby there in his car and raping and murdering her after he found her drunk and distressed in Beverley Road following a night out with friends on January 31, 2019. Her body was found in the Humber Estuary near Spurn Point nearly seven weeks later, on March 20.
The trial has already heard how Relowicz recounted different versions of that night to friends and police, but the defendant denies the charges against him.
Yesterday, the trial heard from Sam Alford, a witness who had been living in a house backing on to the playing fields at the time of Libby’s disappearance.
In a statement given to police on February 4, 2019, Mr Alford said he had been in his bedroom when he heard screaming coming from the fields at just after midnight on February 1.
Oak Road playing fields
“I woke up, looked at my phone to check a text. It was 12.14am and around a minute or two after that’s when I heard the first scream,” he told the court.
“The screams were far away but they were loud enough to reach my bedroom, around roughly 150 metres. Not loud to me, but loud enough to reach my bedroom.”
Describing the rough location of the screams, Mr Alford told the court that his bedroom window looked out onto a track, some woodland, a fishing pond and the River Hull beyond.
He said the screams sounded like they were coming from “the top left of the pond.”
Mr Alford said: “Initially, some screams were intermittent with 30 seconds or a minute between them.
“At first I sort of ignored them, then the second one was a pattern to them and then that’s what sort of made me think.
“It’s hard because where I live is near the uni accommodation, there’s teenagers on the park, girls screaming, people out having parties on the park so you tend to ignore it. It happens all the time.
“Then I heard the screams again and when I looked I couldn’t see anyone on the park. The screams were enough to make me think, ‘What could that be?’ But it was the pattern - they weren’t constant and that’s what sort of stood out for me.
“They sounded like desperation.” Mr Alford said the screams carried on for “between four to seven minutes.”
He said after the last scream he went to the toilet and when he returned to his bedroom he continued to look out of his window.
He said: “I was just looking out of the window, wondering if it was a group of people or if I could see anyone coming off the park.”
Mr Alford says he was looking out of the window for “three or four minutes” before he saw a “male walking off the park.”
He said: “He was walking in a manner where he wasn’t looking behind, asserting where he wanted to go, like he wanted to get off the park.
“When I first saw him, he was walking off the park with his head straight forward and moving with an urgency and then he left.”
He said the man was wearing either “fitted dark coloured joggers” or “cuffed jeans” and a “bomber style jacket.”
When questioned by defence barrister
Oliver Saxby QC, Mr Alford said he was certain of the time that he had woken up, but that he had not heard anyone getting into a car after seeing the man leaving the fields.
He said he did not know what had caused him to wake up in the first place.
Relowicz denies charges of murder.
The trial, which started on Tuesday, January 12, at Sheffield Crown Court before Judge Lambert, is expected to last four weeks.
The trial continues. rape and