Graphic accounts of the appalling head injuries 13-year-old Billie-Jo Jenkins suffered have been described to an Old Bailey jury.

Her skull had been shattered, leaving parts of her brain exposed on the patio where she had been attacked.

Billie-Jo's foster father, Sion Jenkins, 47, is alleged to have struck her forcefully at least five times with an iron tent peg at the family home in Lower Park Road, Hastings on February 15, 1997.

Yesterday, on the seventh day of Jenkins' murder retrial, his neighbour and family friend Denise Lancaster told the jury of a distressed phone call Jenkins made to her at about 3.45pm that day.

Mrs Lancaster, formerly Denise Franklin, immediately left a family gathering at her house and ran to the Jenkins' neighbouring property.

She said: "Sion said there had been an accident with Billie and asked me to come quickly. I sensed in his voice that it was very urgent and I shouted to my brother that I was going and I ran off straight away."

After dashing up Jenkins' front steps and into the house she saw Jenkins and asked him: "Where is she?"

Mother-of-one Mrs Lancaster, a friend of the Jenkinses for two years at the time of the murder, opened the dining room door and went on to the patio where Billie-Jo lay on a black plastic bin liner with terrible injuries.

She said: "Billie was lying down with her head to one side and her hand up near her face. She was lying on her left side and the rest of her body was flat to the ground. She was lying completely flat in a very strange position like she was asleep.

"I bent down and I touched her, touched her head, touched her cheek. I had an overwhelming sense that I wouldn't be able to put her in the recovery position because of her injuries."

On seeing Billie-Jo Mrs Lancaster realised how serious her condition was and left her to run to Jenkins who was in the playroom consoling his daughters Annie and Lottie.

She told him to phone for an ambulance again and impress upon them the urgency for paramedics to arrive quickly.

Jenkins, former headteacher designate at William Parker School in Parkstone Road, Hastings, made a second 999 call.

Mrs Lancaster meanwhile said she returned to Billie-Jo to examine her injuries more closely and to use a towel to staunch her blood.

She said: "I saw her head was completely shattered. I could see her brain and her skull. It was devastating."

On further inspection she noticed a black bin liner stuffed deeply in her left nostril. She said she removed it and a slow trickle of blood emerged.

Jenkins' second 999 call was yesterday played to the six-man, six-woman jury. During it Mrs Lancaster came on the line to tell the operator: "This is a total, total emergency."

She stressed Billie-Jo's pulse was very faint and she feared she was "now lost".

During the call the ambulance arrived but former Helenswood School pupil Billie-Jo was pronounced dead at the scene.

Christopher Burton, who was a paramedic for Sussex Ambulance Service, told the court that Jenkins did not come out on to the patio once as they treated her.

Jenkins denies murder. The case continues.