‘Accused in a hoodie... then a shadow on the shoreline’
A SERIES of CCTV images from the night Alesha MacPhail was abducted and murdered were shown to a jury yesterday.
The High Court in Glasgow heard it took officers only ‘five minutes and 54 seconds’ to walk from the accused’s home to the MacPhail property on the Isle of Bute.
Detective Constable Lisa Whitelaw, of the major investigations team, described her role in collecting CCTV footage for a ‘viewing log’, and how she walked various routes around the scene of the crime.
The court heard it would take 15 to 16 minutes to walk from the home where Alesha had been staying – she had been on holiday visiting her father and grandparents – to the site where her body was found.
Yesterday, DC Whitelaw talked the court through a number of CCTV clips, including some featuring the home of the accused and two other homes on the shorefront.
Shown to the court in chronological order, the first video shows the 16-year-old accused of Alesha’s rape and murder leaving his home at 1.54am on July 2, wearing a black hooded top. Her body was found at 8.45am that day.
While watching another clip from 2.26am, DC Whitelaw described seeing ‘a shadow moving across the shoreline’.
She said she could see ‘something hanging down from the front’ of a person seen walking and told the court the figure ‘slows down and appears to be carrying something in front of them’. The next video shown to the court shows the accused returning to his family home at 3.35am, without the black hoodie he had been wearing earlier.
DC Whitelaw described hearing a dog barking as the boy returned to the property, while a ‘shh’ sound had been recorded.
The boy was filmed again while leaving the house at 3.45am, with no shoes, but wearing a pair of shorts and carrying something, which his mother had previously told the court appeared to be a T-shirt.
He returned to his mother’s house again at 3.52am but left at 3.58am. He could be seen sprinting out of the property with what appeared to be a torch in his hand. He returned for a final time at 4.07am.
Alesha was reported missing by her grandmother, Angela King, at 6.23am on the morning of July 2.
The six-year-old had been in the early days of a three-week holiday on Bute, in the Firth of Clyde.
Her naked body was found at 8.54am in the grounds of the former Kyles Hydropathic Hotel.
She was found by a member of the public, who called 999, and was pronounced dead by paramedics at 9.23am. After a post-mortem examination, the cause of death was established as ‘pressure to neck and face’.
Her death became a murder investigation and the accused was arrested two days later.
Alesha lived in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, with her mother Georgina Lochrane, 23, but spent holidays and weekends on Bute with her father Robert MacPhail, 25. She had been staying with him and her paternal grandparents – Calum MacPhail, 49, and 46-year-old Miss King.
The trial continues.
‘Appears to be carrying something’