A HAIRDRESSER accused of trying to deliberately infect male lovers with HIV went on the run and used a fake name to meet more men, a court heard.

Daryll Rowe, 27, was living in a tent, described as his hideout on the Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh, before moving in with a man in Sunderland, the prosecution said.

Following a police interview, Mr Rowe left the Mussleburgh flat he was living in.

He had previously been living in Brighton where he is accused of having sex with men in an attempt to give them HIV.

Caroline Carberry QC asked Mr Rowe: “You decided to make yourself difficult to find? You went on the run.”

Mr Rowe said: “I was stressed out and I wanted to get away.”

Ms Carberry asked Mr Rowe why he used a fake name with two men in the North East of England he went on to move in with.

Police in Sussex had already issued warnings about a man called Daryll Rowe who was infecting people with HIV in the Brighton area and stories had appeared in the national press.

Asked why he told the one of them men his name was Gary, Mr Rowe said: “If I told him my real name he would Google me.”

Ms Carberry asked Rowe why he did not visit a sexual health clinic in Sunderland to get more of the anti-retroviral drugs he had started taking after returning to Scotland from Brighton.

“Because I would’ve been turned in to the police,” he said.

Police found an East Coast Buses ticket tucked into a box of sabotaged condoms when Mr Rowe was taken into custody.

The condoms had been removed from their packaging, the teat snipped off and put back in their wrappers.

Ms Carberry said the bus line runs near his parents home, the flat he was living in and Edinburgh.

He denies the sabotaged condoms were his.

“It was in a box of sabotaged condoms which must belong to you,” Ms Carberry said. “No,” Mr Rowe said.

When police tracked him down to a house he was sharing with another man in the Wallsend are of Newcastle, Mr Rowe admitted he jumped out of the window.

He said: “I panicked. I saw all the police officers and I just panicked. There was nowhere I could’ve gone, it was just stupid.”

Mr Rowe denies five charged of GBH with intent and five of attempted GBH with intent. The trial at Lewes Crown Court continues.