TWO teenage girls told a murder trial how they saw a bloodstained father of five stagger across the road before he slumped lifeless into a York garden.

Rebecca Lucas, 18, said she saw Mark Webb, 40, stumbling with his hand over his neck, as he walked away from a house in Stuart Road, Acomb, where he allegedly had his throat cut.

She told Leeds Crown Court: “He stumbled for a second and then he walked towards Middleton Road, back where he had come from. He had his hand across his body. It was holding his neck.

“Just before he moved out of my sight, he moved his hand away – I saw it was covered in blood – and he vanished.”

Miss Lucas and her sister, Emily, 17, were giving evidence yesterday on the second day of the trial of Brian Cox, 29, who is accused of murdering Mr Webb on March 4, by cutting his throat with a knife.

The teenagers’ mother, local neighbourhood watch co-ordinator Elizabeth Brown, claimed that when they told her about Mr Webb, she phoned police and went out to ask her near neighbour, Kerry Munton, if he was all right.

Mrs Brown told the court: “She said he was dead, he had done it himself and she made a movement with her hand towards her neck. And she also said he had said at some stage, ‘Watch this, bitch’.”

The prosecution claim Munton saw Cox attack Mr Webb outside the back door of her house in Stuart Road.

Rebecca and Emily Lucas told the jury they saw Mr Webb, of Cornlands Road, go into an alleyway next to Ms Munton’s house, before coming back out shortly afterwards.

Rebecca and Emily alleged they saw a man whose name they did not know come out of the same alleyway immediately in front of Mr Webb.

“He hesitated for a second and then he ran towards Gale Lane,” said Rebecca.

The prosecution allege the man was Cox, 29, of Bede Avenue in Clifton, who denies murdering Mr Webb.

Mrs Brown alleged that later the same day, she saw Mr Webb’s wife, Susan, smoking on the doorstep of Munton’s house.

“She seemed to be taking it very, very well,” Mrs Brown claimed.

She said there had been speculation on the social networking website Facebook in the hours after Mr Webb’s death that he had killed himself.

Susan Webb, 30, of Middleton Road in Acomb, and who was in a relationship with Cox, denies perverting the course of justice. So too does Cox’s ex-partner Dawn Heather Coates, 49, of Chapel Terrace, Acomb.

Mrs Brown said she overheard Susan Webb talking on the phone loudly in the street outside Mrs Munton’s house as she was returning home from a shop just before 3.45pm on March 4. She seemed upset.

“(Susie said) she was getting on with her life, something to do with the children, how she had supported these children and the person on the other end of the phone hadn’t done anything to support these children,” claimed Mrs Brown.

She went home and called up to her daughters, who were upstairs singing.

Emily said: “She likes to make sure everything is okay in the street, so she said to keep an eye out in case things got really bad because of the way she (Susan Webb) was shouting down the phone.”

Less than an hour later, the girls allegedly saw Mr Webb go down the alleyway towards the back door of Ms Munton’s house. He was later found lying in the garden of Susan Webb’s home.

• The trial continues.