A WOMAN has described her “close shave” with Russell Bishop when she was a teenager.

Justine Brazil said she still gets “shivers” when she reads about the murders of Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows at Wild Park in Brighton in 1986.

She lived a few doors away from Russell Bishop’s council flat in Stephen’s Road in Hollingdean at the time.

About a year earlier she claims she had an encounter with Bishop at the front door of her friend’s home, with him claiming to be an ambulance driver.

She said: “My friend and I had a very close shave with him. We were around 14 or 15 years old at the time, but we were both small for our ages and looked a lot younger.

“One night my friend’s mum was run over near The Level and broke her pelvis. She was taken to hospital, and as she would be on her own I went around to her flat to stay with her.

“I had noticed Russell a few times, he lived at the bottom of my street in Stephen’s Road. I remember seeing him tinkering with his car most days, and always wearing the blue sweatshirt, he never seemed to wear anything else.

“We were alone in my friend’s house and there was a knock at the door, we both answered the door as it was a little late at night, it was Russell Bishop standing there.

“He said he had come around to check up on us as he was the ambulance driver that took her mum to hospital.

“Luckily I recognised him as living down the street and I knew he always seemed to be at home, rather than being a worker, so I immediately knew he was lying.

“I said we were OK and quickly shut the door in his face. I honestly believe that had I not recognised him we may have let him in and we could have been his first victims.”

Ms Brazil said the moment has stayed with her as 52-year-old Bishop has faced a retrial at The Old Bailey over the past nine weeks.

She added: “Every time I read about this case I get shivers down my spine and realise how lucky I am to be alive.

“I wish he would just admit to what he has done and not put the families through all this again.

“I thank god every day that the little girl survived and was able to get him jailed otherwise who knows how many more little girls’ lives would have been lost.”