A teenager watched his best friend punching a suspected paedophile on the day he was fatally attacked.

Brian Hunter, 18, told the High Court in Aberdeen that his childhood friend Paul Noble, 17, had been involved in an attack on a man at a playing field in the city.

Noble is one of five people accused of murdering Gordon Morrice by attacking him at a Seaton park on June 24, 2010.

Robert Laird, 25, Paul Yates, 38, his partner Williamina Stewart, 37, and her brother Hector Stewart, 30, and Noble are alleged to have assaulted Mr Morrice and hit him on the body with a bicycle in a park.

Mr Morrice was said to have been so severely injured that he died almost nine months later, on March 14 last year, at an Aberdeen nursing home.

Mr Hunter told the court he saw pal Noble "kicking out" at the man and throwing punches when he arrived at the scene.

The apprentice painter and decorator was accused of committing perjury in a bid to minimise his friend's role in the alleged murder.

The teenager told the court he saw accused Williamina Stewart attack the same man but that he did not tell police at the time of his statement four days after the incident because he "didn't want to bring trouble to my door".

Williamina Stewart's defence counsel Jock Thomson QC accused Mr Hunter of lying to protect his friend, who he had know since primary school.

Asked how Noble was behaving after the attack, Mr Hunter said: "Cocky. As if he was the big man."

The trial previously heard how some residents in Seaton suspected Mr Morrice was a paedophile after he asked if he could bounce on a trampoline with two young girls.

Constable William Thom told the trial he ran on checks on Mr Morrice after he was reported to the polcie, but they came back clear and he was escorted home.

The five accused deny murdering Mr Morrice on Aberdeen's Golf Road.

The trial, before Lord Uist, continues.