Fan 'saw Leeds footballers run from scene'
A young woman soccer fan has told the trial of three Leeds United footballers that she saw two of them running away from the area where they are alleged to have attacked an Asian man.
The 23-year-old Leeds United supporter, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was out with a friend and had been in the same Majestyk nightclub where the footballers had been earlier.
She said that, as she and her friend walked into Boar Lane in the city centre, she saw Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer running towards them.
Three footballers Lee Bowyer, Jonathan Woodgate and Tony Hackworth as well as two friends of Woodgate are charged with affray and with causing GBH with intent to Sarfraz Najeib, of Rotherham, South Yorkshire.
The woman said: "As we were walking down the road I saw Jonathan Woodgate run round the corner at a casual jog, then he seemed to walk past us.
"Then another group of lads came round the corner and they were running. As they came into the road they slowed down and started to walk. Lee Bowyer actually knocked my shoulder and turned me sideways and looked at me really funny.
"As he knocked me, he looked at me with a scowl face and it was not a right nice look, as if to say 'you're in the way, move out of the way'.
"As I turned to look back at him, he was looking back at me. I noticed he had a round circle on the top of his cheek which I hadn't noticed before."
The woman, a supporter from the age of 12, said earlier in the evening she had seen Woodgate with friends in a bar, the Square on the Lane. One of the group had empty glasses in front of him on the bar and was mixing the vodka-based "alcopops" Hooch and Mule into them, she said.
Woodgate, 21, of Middlesbrough, Bowyer 24, of Leeds, Hackworth, 20, of Leeds, and Neale Caveney and Paul Clifford, both 21, of Middlesbrough, all deny the charges. Woodgate, Caveney and Clifford, with Leeds United player Michael Duberry, 24, also plead not guilty to conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
