A young mother told a court how she watched a group of people surround a man they believed to be a paedophile as two men beat and kicked him on the ground.

Gordon Morrice, 57, died in March last year, nine months after being set upon at a playing field in the Seaton area of Aberdeen.

Five people are on trial at the High Court in Aberdeen accused of murdering Mr Morrice by causing the injuries from which he later died.

Ann Marie Currie, 23, told the jury she dialled 999 as she watched how 25-year-old Robert Laird and another man "battered" Mr Morrice in front of a crowd of youngsters.

She later told police that the alleged victim didn't fight back and "didn't have a chance".

Miss Currie, of Aberdeen, said she watched watched the attack from the window of her flat in a tower block.

She said a group of seven or eight people had surrounded the "old guy" as two males attacked him.

She told the court: "They were hitting him. They kicked him to the ground and they jumped on his head quite a few times and they rammed bikes into him.

"The old guy got up and tried to stagger away but they kicked him and he fell again.

"They stamped on his head."

Asked if she recognised the people who were doing the stamping, she replied: "I only know one - Bob", before pointing to Laird in the dock.

Laird's defence counsel Frances McMenamin QC asked Miss Currie why she was unable to identify the second attacker in court even though she had pointed him out to police two days after the alleged incident.

Mc McMenamin asked: "Did you know this person and you just don't want to say who this person is?"

The witness replied: "No. To be honest I just wanted it all over and done with."

Laird and his co-accused, Paul Yates, 38, his partner Williamina Stewart, 37, her brother Hector Stewart, 30, and 17-year-old Paul Noble all deny murdering Mr Morrice by beating him so severely in the attack on June 24, 2010, that he never recovered.

They are alleged to have struck Mr Morrice on the body with a bicycle, repeatedly punched him on the head and body and repeatedly kicked, stamped and jumped on his head and body at the Golf Road park.

The trial, before Lord Uist, continues.