A MAN on trial for the murder of Caroline Coyne told a jury he did not try to attack a second woman a month later.
Carl Powell is alleged to have grabbed the woman by the throat and dragged her into the grounds of the City College site in Carlton Road. But she managed to talk him out of committing any further offence.
Powell was yesterday quizzed by prosecutor Stuart Rafferty QC about the second incident, which began when the woman asked him the time.
Mr Rafferty suggested that Powell was "surprised" that the woman was not as drunk as he had thought she was.
But Powell told him: "Why would I have thought she was drunk? I hadn't tried to attack her or drag her across the road."
As soon as he was out of sight, the woman phoned her mother and told her she had been grabbed by the neck and followed by a man who would not leave her.
Powell, 23, of Carlton, was first arrested in connection with this incident. Police then made the connection between his appearance and the man on the CCTV footage of Ms Coyne the night she was allegedly stalked and killed.
Jurors have heard that CCTV images pinpointed the movements of both women walking alone in Nottingham, with the solitary figure of Powell in the same area.
Powell denies he killed 28-year-old Ms Coyne after she had been to her half-sister's birthday party.
She was discovered dead by a couple on a pathway in Thorneywood Mount, Thorneywood, at 8.40am on Saturday, July 23, last year.
She may have survived for several hours before dying from head injuries.
Powell says he was not following her down a street – he was just being nosey after he heard a car bleeping and a screeching sound.
He said: "In my head I just thought I was being nosey."
Mr Rafferty put it to Powell that both women had been "throttled" by him and sexually assaulted, but he denied the claims.
The barrister said: "One of them talked her way out of what you wanted to do to her immediately."
Powell denied this.
Mr Rafferty suggested that Powell sexually assaulted her – because he "couldn't let it go".
But Powell replied: "No, I did not."
"And one of them wasn't quite so lucky, because you killed her, didn't you?" asked Mr Rafferty.
Powell said: "No".
Powell denies murder and three further allegations which relate to the second woman – false imprisonment, false imprisonment with intent to commit a sexual offence and sexual assault.
The case proceeds.
