April Jones was seen by her best friend getting into a Land Rover with “a happy face”, the jury in her murder trial heard today.
A DVD of police interviews with the girl, who is seven and cannot be identified, was today played at the trial of Mark Bridger at Mold Crown Court.
April, five, vanished while playing with her friend near their homes in Machynlleth, mid-Wales, on October 1 last year.
The prosecution says April was abducted by Bridger, 47, who then drove her off in his Land Rover Discovery and murdered her.
The former slaughterhouse worker Bridger, claims he knocked down and killed Aprila accidentally with his Land Rover and cannot remember what he did with the body.
In the interview, the girl is sitting on a sofa playing with a brown rabbit cuddly toy.
She told police they had been playing on the Bryn-Y-Gog estate the previous evening when she saw April “by a Land Rover van”.
“I saw her by the person that was waiting by the van,” the girl said.
“She did not say she was going to go in it. I know they [April’s parents] wouldn’t let her go at that time.
“The man didn’t take her in the van — she got into the van, having a happy face she had and she wasn’t upset.”
The witness’s statement, recorded the day after April disappeared, was played on a videolink watched by jurors.
She was holding a white teddy bear and a mug of juice, with an adult sitting next to her.
During her evidence, court officials, including Judge Mr Justice Griffith-Williams, did not wear their wigs or robes.
There were breaks every 10 or 15 minutes to ensure she did not “tire or lose concentration”, the judge told the jury.
The interviewing police office asked the girl to draw a picture of the Land Rover she saw and describe the vehicle in greater detail.
The young witness said it had been parked near garages on the estate and next to a BT van.
“She got into the back of the van and it just drove off the way it came and parked,” said the girl.
Asked what happened next, the girl said April’s brother came over and said it was time for her to come home.
“Then I said what happened and I gave April’s bike back to him and got on my bike.
“He came back and I told his mum.
“His mum called the police.”
Asked to describe the man she saw April with, the girl said he had brown hair and a green jacket. She said he may have been wearing “bluey/black jeans”.
“I can definitely tell you he had brown hair,” she said.
“It wasn’t that dark and I could see he had brown hair because the headlights were on.”
She was asked to draw on her picture where the man had been standing and said he “got into the van when April got into the van”.
Bridger, of Ceinws, denies abduction, murder and intending to pervert the course of justice by disposing of, concealing or destroying April’s body. The trial continues.
