The "Good Samaritan" who watched over tragic Bradford prostitute Maureen Stepan in the last months of her life described to Sheffield Crown Court how he discovered her dead body.

Talat Khan, of Huddersfield, sat in court looking at the floor as the jury heard the 999 call he made ten minutes after finding the 18-year-old dead at her Washington Street home.

He told the emergency service operator: "There's been a murder. I've just been down there and she's lying on the floor dead."

And as the operator took more details, he said: "Oh God, I don't believe it." Mr Khan lay on the floor of the court to demonstrate the position Maureen was lying in when he found her on the evening of June 9, 1995, with black cloth stuffed into her mouth and fabric around her neck.

Mr Khan said he had knocked on her door several times but there was no answer. He pushed the door open.

"I scanned the room from left to right and there was nobody in. I was about to walk to the kitchen and I noticed a pale figure on the right hand side. I looked down and saw Maureen's body lying in front of the gas fire.''

George Naylor, of Castle Square, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, denies the murder of Maureen Stepan.

Mr Khan had met Maureen, a heroin and crack addict, as a punter on Church Street, Manningham, in August 1994, and later befriended her, spending five evenings a week watching over her while she worked as a prostitute.

He also gave her cash, clothing and when she had nowhere to go she occasionally stayed at his home. "I felt very sorry for her, pity, sympathy,'' he said. "I was not having sex with her."

Earlier the court heard from neighbours who described screams and footsteps coming from Maureen's home at around 3am of the day she died.

The case continues.

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