A TEENAGER has told a court she was with Aaron Jenkins the night he killed binman Stephen Whitehead.

The young woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she did not believe Jenkins, 20, when he told her he had killed a man.

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Mr Whitehead, 49, was found dead in the canteen at Pendle Skips, Burnley, after being bludgeoned with a sledgehammer at the hands of Jenkins.

The woman told Preston Crown Court that Jenkins had asked her to go with him to Pendle Skips in Balderstone Close, Burnley, on July 27 last year, when he planned to steal a motorbike for a friend.

When they arrived at the recycling plant the woman said she stayed at the gate while Jenkins climbed over and went inside.

She told the court: “It was dark. I just stood by the gates in the pitch black. I was fair scared and terrified because I didn't know if anyone was going to come out of the trees.

"I was telling him to hurry up because I wanted to go. He wasn't answering his phone when I was ringing him and eventually he did answer and kept telling me 'I'm coming in five minutes' but he was longer than five minutes.

“Then he came back to the gates and told me the bike was too heavy and said he was going back to do something. (When he returned) he climbed over the gates and we walked and he was like normal at first.

"As soon as we got on to the main road, that was when he started looking around and being weird and then Aaron told me he thinks he has killed someone. I didn't think he was that sort of person. I didn't know whether to believe him or not.

“I thought he was trying to scare me or something.”

The woman said she was unsure whether Jenkins was telling the truth until she saw reports on Facebook and in the news that a man had been found dead at the plant where she and Jenkins had been.

She said: “I didn't know what to do. I was panicking and really scared. He had killed a man and if I said summat he could do anything.”

The woman told the court Jenkins told her what to say when she was questioned by police but then an interview was interrupted with news Jenkins had confessed to killing Mr Whitehead.

She said: “I felt relieved because I could get everything off my chest and I could speak up and tell them what I knew.”

The woman denies attempting to pervert the course of justice, and Jenkins, of Devonshire Road, Burnley, denies murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.