Stable girl in tears as 999 blaze call played to court

Elizabeth Murphy, 18, known as Lizzie, left the witness box at Leeds Crown Court sobbing and the recording was then played to the jury in her absence.

During it she could be heard screaming hysterically as she told the operator: "We've got a fire and we can't get out."

She was repeatedly told to calm down and assured help was on the way.

Eventually she was persuaded by her boyfriend Liam Foley to climb out of a window at her first floor flat and down a drainpipe, telling the operator in desperation: "I'm climbing out".

The fire claimed the lives of apprentice jockeys Jamie Kyne, 18, from Co Galway, Ireland and Jan Wilson, 19, from Forfar, Scotland, at Buckrose Court, Norton, Malton on September 5 last year.

The prosecution claims Peter Brown, 37, deliberately started a blaze while drunk in the communal entrance to the block in revenge for being refused entry earlier that night to a party at Miss Murphy's flat.

Brown denies murdering Mr Kyne and Miss Wilson or alternative charges of manslaughter. He has also pleaded not guilty to arson intending to endanger life.

Miss Murphy told the jury she had invited some friends round for a drink on the evening of September 4 after she finished work at Julie Camacho's racing yard in Malton.

That included Jamie Kyne and another apprentice jockey Dean Pratt who was staying at his flat. During the evening there was movement between her flat and theirs, and jockey Ian Brennan and his girlfriend Jan Wilson also arrived.

At one stage she saw Brown outside but told him to "f... off" when he was speaking to her boyfriend on the courtyard. "I thought he might be offering Liam drugs," she said

She said months previously she fell out with Brown when she went to his flat one night in the same complex and found her boyfriend about to take cocaine there.

She said she did not approve of drugs and shouted at him and eventually he went with her without taking it, but Brown had called her "a silly cow" and said she should let him do what he wanted.

On the night of the party she was a "bit tipsy" by the time five of them went for a takeaway pizza. She and Mr Foley then returned to the flat and went to bed around 12.45am.

Around 2am she was woken by a beeping noise but saw nothing out the window. When it continued she opened the flat door on to the landing.

There was smoke and she could see fire in the entrance below and flames already licking over the banisters on the landing above her.

When she returned to court she told the jury she did not want to climb out the window but eventually did so, into Mr Foley's arms. Brown was also there and she had seen him taking off his jumper which he put over his head before kicking in the entrance door.

She was then in shock and ran into the road screaming. She then went to help Dean Pratt after seeing Liam carry him from the courtyard where he had jumped from the second floor.

She held his head as he lay on the ground mumbling. "He was in his boxers covered in blood and smoke."

Miss Murphy said she also saw the flats owner Alan Foster putting a suitcase in his car before trying to reverse it until he was stopped because Mr Pratt was lying behind it.

The trial continues.