‘Libby wanted my help and I only wanted to help her’
MAN ACCUSED OF RAPE AND MURDER TELLS COURT OF MEETING STUDENT
PAWEL Relowicz has admitted that Libby Squire was “surely vulnerable” when he says he had sex with her in Oak Road on the night she disappeared, a trial has heard.
Relowicz, 26, of Raglan Street, denies the prosecution’s claims that he raped and murdered Libby at Oak Road playing fields at just after midnight on February 1, 2019.
Instead, on day nine of the trial yesterday, he told the court he had found her on the snowy pavement in Beverley Road drunk, “crying a lot”, “desperate” and wanting to go home to her mum, and had wanted to help her.
Under cross-examination by prosecution barrister Richard Wright QC, who pointed out that Libby had also injured her knee when Relowicz found her, the defendant conceded that Libby “was surely vulnerable, she was drunk”.
He had previously disagreed with Mr Wright’s assertion that Libby was “extremely vulnerable” when he found her near the junction of Haworth Street.
Previously in the trial, the court had heard how Libby ended up there after being refused entry to the
Welly nightclub on a night out with friends. CCTV had captured her unsteadily walking out into Beverley Road after a taxi had dropped her outside her Wellesley Avenue home.
On Monday, Relowicz had said he had tried to drive Libby home and had driven to Oak Road to turn around after she did not give him an address. He said he stopped there as he thought she was going to be sick.
He said he went to the toilet nearby and returned to her, which is when she “asked him to hug her” and they began kissing, before having sex on some grass near to the car.
He told the court he thought she would be sick again, so they stopped having sex and he helped her up. She apologised and tried to kiss him
again, he claimed. When he refused, she scratched his face and he drove away, leaving her alive and well, he said.
On Tuesday, Mr Wright said: “She wanted her mum and to go home. She didn’t want to go to a dark road with you for sex on a piece of ground, did she Mr Relowicz?”
But Relowicz insisted he had “only wanted to help her” when he first found her – despite admitting previously that he had been driving around that area “looking for a woman for sex” or to masturbate at in the street.
Mr Wright asked him: “Should we say you managed to suppress your sexual urges while you were with this girl?”
Relowicz said: “Correct.” “Although you told us yesterday you were looking for easy sex, this lost, hypothermic and drunk girl was not easy sex, is that right?” Mr Wright asked Relowicz
Relowicz said: “She wanted my help and I only wanted to help her.”
Libby Squire’s body was found in the Humber Estuary near Spurn Point on March 20, 2019, seven weeks after her disappearance.
The trial against Relowicz, which started on Tuesday, January 12, at Sheffield Crown Court before Judge Lambert, is expected to last four weeks.
Relowicz was due to stand trial in June 2020, but it was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. He denies the charges of rape and murder against him.
The trial continues.