A WITNESS told a jury how a man who was lying in the road when he was run over by a taxi was trying to speak when he first knelt by him.

Simon Foy said he was driving behind the taxi when the incident happened in Haxby Road, York, in the early hours of October 11 last year, having turned his car around because he had seen a fight.

Initially the fight, which was like a “rugby scrum” involving four or five people, was on the pavement but as he looked back, it moved into the road.

As he drove back towards the incident he saw the fighting had stopped and someone was lying in the road.

He said that the taxi in front, which was not speeding but doing about the same as him, 20mph to 25mph, did not brake “until it was on top of the body.”

He told Leeds Crown Court he stopped nearby and was shouting at the taxi driver. There was a woman he had seen earlier at the side of the road who was shouting at the taxi driver who was “very shocked. He was shaking.”

He said: “She was yelling at him to get out of the vehicle, also angry at what he had done. I was yelling, he was saying ‘what should I do, what should I do’ and shaking at the same time.”

Mr Foy said the female was screaming at the driver and appeared to be trying to pull him out.

On trial from York are Linden Lee Smith, 20, of Kirkham Avenue, Bell Farm, Jack David Alexander, 21, of Fox Covert, Huntington and Robbie Mark McHale, 20, of Fifth Avenue, Tang Hall, who each deny unlawfully killing Sam Wilson, aged 21.

They also deny a second charge of assaulting his friend, Henry Smith. Mr Wilson was allegedly lying in the road following an assault, and Mr Foy told the jury that the woman told the driver to get out of his vehicle.

He said he remembered the taxi driver saying he needed to move the vehicle. “At this point the female was still shouting at him but I knelt down to look at the body under the vehicle.”

He said it seemed to him that Mr Wilson was still alive and was trying to speak to him.

Mr Foy, 21, broke down and put his head in his hands for a couple of minutes before continuing with his evidence.

He said he knelt down for about 30 seconds when the vehicle suddenly moved backwards and at this point it was obvious Mr Wilson had been seriously hurt.

The prosecution claim the three accused men significantly contributed to Mr Wilson’s death by leaving him insensible in the road.

The trial continues.