A LORRY driver accused of battering and strangling a 15-year-old schoolgirl five years ago claimed he was in Bolton looking for sex from prostitutes on the night of her death.

Darren Ashurst denied taking Louise Sellars to a lovers lane in Wigan, wrapping a rope tightly round her neck and kicking and stamping on her.

Ashurst claimed on the night Louise was brutally killed, he was touring Bolton, looking for a prostitute to take part in a sexual act.

And he admitted lying to police when they quizzed him about his movements when he became a suspect in the murder inquiry.

"I didn't want to to tell them where I was in case my family or my girlfriend found out because they would have been disgusted," he told a jury at Manchester Crown Court.

Ashurst, 26, of Back Lane, Appley Bridge, Wigan, was giving evidence at the trial in which he denies murdering Louise, whose body was found in a lonely copse behind Billinge Hospital in August, 1995.

Tyre marks similar to those on his Ford Escort RS Turbo were found at the scene, but he was not charged for more than four years until DNA tests on a cigarette butt near the body were matched with his blood.

Ashurst claimed he had taken his girlfriend to where she was baby-sitting and later went to Bolton looking for a prostitute, but did not have "the guts" to stop and talk to anyone.

He said the only explanation he could offer about the cigarette end was that it was left at the murder scene by Louise or somebody with her.

Ashurst admitted he had given Louise lifts in his car several times, and had seen her on the night she died but did not pick her up. He told the jury that being accused of murder had destroyed his life.

The trial continues.