Alleged killer's "strange" exchange after attack

Michael McCafferty said he was on his way to the petrol station near Mushroom Roundabout, at around 4am last August 10, when he saw Dale Jones (30) coming the other way.

Mr McCafferty told Sheffield Crown Court this morning: “I said: ‘Morning, Dale’ and he said: ‘Ey up Mickey, it’s a good job tha’s not a P***.’

“I just said: ‘No, I'm not am I?’

“I just took it as him being Dale. It was strange.”

Jones, of East Bawtry Road, Whiston, is accused of a sustained, racist assault on Mr Ahmed just minutes before seeing Mr McCafferty.

Mr Andrew O’Byrne, defending Jones, said to the witness: “As far as the conversation went, Mr Jones was just greeting you.”

Mr McCafferty said: “Yes.”

Mr O'Byrne said: “There was no reference to a P***, was there?”

Mr McCafferty replied: “Yes, there was.”

Mr O’Byrne pointed out that there was a “family connection” between Mr McCafferty and Mr Ahmed (81), as the pensioner was grandfather to Mr McCafferty’s step-sister’s child.

He added that Mr McCafferty’s wife Claire McCafferty was friends with Emma Hunt, sister to Damien Hunt (30) and ex-partner to Dale Jones.

Another witness described strange behaviour by Hunt in the hours around the attack, captured on her home CCTV.

Rebecca Winfindale said Hunt twice passed her van, which was parked outside her home, early the same morning.

At one point, he wrote something in dust on the door and at another he got in the van and sat there for ten minutes.

Hunt also urinated in Ms Winfindale’s garden at one point, looking directly into her CCTV camera.

Mr Andrew Robertson, prosecuting, asked the witness if she noticed anything strange about Hunt’s clothes.

She replied that Hunt was wearing different clothes the first and second time he appeared on her camera.

When she confronted Hunt about his behaviour later on, she said, he replied that he was just “looking for Dale”.

Both Jones, of East Bawtry Road and Hunt, of Doncaster Road deny murder.

The trial continues.