A SCHOOLGIRL has told a jury how a “creepy” stranger attacked her from behind as she was walking home across her school’s grounds.

The 15-year-old said the man, wearing a hoodie, grabbed her head and put his fingers in her mouth. She was on her own listening to music on her headphones.

“I was so scared,” she said on a video played to the jury at York Crown Court.

“I started screaming. I thought I heard him say something like ‘shut up’ like under his breath.

"I started panicking and screaming. I was saying ‘leave me alone’.

"I bit him to try and get him off. I bit him quite hard.”

She said she struggled, and the man let her go and he ran off towards the school.

She ran off in the opposite direction, and then, after contacting her mother, who told her to get help at the school, went back into the building by a different route. When she found a teacher and a friend, she was crying.

James Colby, 28, of no fixed address, denies causing actual bodily harm to the girl at a York school.

The teenager said she had stayed on after school finished at 3.10pm on November 28 to do some work and was walking on a path from the school bike sheds to a main road at 4pm when she saw a man walking towards her on the other side of the path.

After they passed each other, she heard something and looking round saw he had come behind her and was following her. She said she started walking faster.

“I thought he was a little bit creepy,” she said.

The man had dark bags under his eyes and reddening on the top of his cheeks. “It seemed to be quite a droopy face,” she alleged.

She said the attacker had a hoodie on that seemed baggy on him and his clothes seemed scruffy and not clean.

Earlier, opening the prosecution, Liam O’Brien alleged the attacker had been caught on CCTV running at the school and that Colby had been seen on CCTV at a hostel the previous evening wearing identical clothes.

He claimed Colby was staying at the hostel, which was within walking distance of the school.

The trial continues.