A friend of murdered teenager Hannah Foster told a jury today how she waved goodbye to her after they parted at the end of a night out.
Helen Wilkinson said the pair had been friends since the age of 11 and both went to Barton Peveril College, where they were studying A-Levels and shared the same subjects of chemistry and biology.
The Oxford graduate and PhD student told the jury
at Winchester Crown Court that she had stayed the night at Hannah's home in Southampton and, on March 14 2003, the two girls, then 17, met after college and decided to go out for the night to several pubs in the Portswood area of Southampton.
Miss Wilkinson told the jury that she and Hannah first went to the Bent Brief, where Miss Wilkinson said she got some money from her mother.
She said they then went to the Hobbit, where they both had a double vodka lime and lemonade and met other friends. She said it was the only drink they had that night.
She then said they went on to the So bar by about 10.30pm.
At the So bar, the girls talked about moving on to another bar called Lennon's and, wiping away tears, Miss Wilkinson said: "We started to walk there and Hannah said: 'Shall we just not bother?' and I said yes, and we turned back.
"We started walking back into Portswood so I could get a bus home."
The jury was shown CCTV footage of the two girls walking past the NatWest bank captured at 22.43 on March 14.
Miss Wilkinson then said they stopped in Portswood Road where they a few minutes until the bus which she was going to take was seen coming up the road.
"The bus came, we saw it at a distance, and Hannah decided to start off because she said the bus was coming and she started to walk," explained Miss Wilkinson.
Nicholas Haggan QC, prosecuting, asked: "Presumably you took a seat and the bus moved off along Portswood Road?"
Miss Wilkinson replied: "Yes."
Mr Haggan: "As the bus moved away down Portswood Road, did you see Hannah?"
Miss Wilkinson replied: "She was walking down Highfield Lane, and she turned and waved. I waved."
Mr Haggan: "Did she wave back?"
Wiping away tears, Miss Wilkinson replied: "Yes."
Earlier, the jury of eight men and four women were told this was the last time that Hannah Foster was seen alive.
Her body was found on March 16 2003, dumped at a roadside in Allington Lane, West End, near Southampton.
She had been raped and strangled.
Maninder Pal Singh Kohli, 40, a sandwich delivery van driver, is accused of her murder, rape, kidnap and false imprisonment, but denies all the charges, the court was told.
He is alleged to have snatched Hannah from the street in his van in the moments after she waved goodbye to her friend to make the few hundred yards walk back to her home.
The jury was told yesterday that police were able to analyse Hannah's mobile phone data and captured Kohli's van moving along motorways linking Southampton and Portsmouth on the night she disappeared.
This included matching the van's movements with mobile phone mast data from when Hannah made a 999 call, hoping that the operator would be able to understand she had been abducted, it is alleged, by Kohli.
However, because she did not speak, the call was disconnected.
Kohli fled the United Kingdom to India, but was arrested by Indian authorities in 2004 and extradited to the United Kingdom in 2007, the jury was told.
The full article contains 615 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
