A TEENAGER who denies murdering her boyfriend has admitted hiding under a bed with “the killer” while police swarmed the village.

Officers with sniffer dogs began making inquiries in Grange Villa, near Chester-le-Street, following the discovery of Mark Shaw’s badly beaten body.

Zoe Warren, 19, who was lying low at a friend’s house, told the jury at her murder trial she stayed with her co-accused, Kieran Adey, because she was “in shock” and “not thinking straight”.

She said: “I thought I was going to be brought into it. I knew I had not done anything wrong.”

But, under cross examination, she was accused of telling “a pack of lies” to help her “get away with murder”.

Miss Warren, who had lived with Mr Shaw, 29, for a couple of weeks said Mr Adey, then 18, became angry and violent with Mr Shaw over an unpaid debt of £5.

She said Mr Adey and Ricky Willas punched and kicked him about the head before tying him up with a phone charger.

Newcastle Crown Court heard Mr Willas left to go “lamping” but Mr Adey locked the door, carried Mr Shaw upstairs and escalated the violence, putting a belt around his head and hitting him with a pole.

Miss Warren said: “After he hit him with a pole he put it down and picked the knife up. He stabbed him. I was stood in the door way and screamed.

“I was terrified I could not believe what had just happened.”

She added she was too scared to call the police and could not leave because the door had been locked.

The jury heard how she stayed with Mr Adey throughout the night, visiting other houses in the village, returning to the murder scene to collect possessions.

She admitted texting her mother and saying she needed collecting because a drug addict in Newcastle had died in her arms despite her efforts to save him.

She also told Simon Cope, Mr Shaw’s friend, he was in hospital having had a heroin overdose.

The murder happened overnight between Friday, December 16, and the following day, which she spent with Mr Adey, helping, the Crown argues, get rid of the evidence.

Prosecutor Nick Dry said, if innocent, she had ample opportunity to ask for help, not least when police officers began investigating following the grim discovery at Pine Street at 6.15pm.

He said: “The presence of police officers drove you under a bed. There you are, Mark’s partner, having witnessed this horrific murder, hiding under a bed with the killer.”

Toby Hedworth, representing Mr Adey, who admits beating Mr Shaw but claims Miss Warren delivered the fatal stab wound, said: “You had taken what Kieran Adey and Ricky Willas had been doing into a completely different league.

“That is why, I suggest, you were not trying to get the emergency services or explaining to your family and friends. You were telling a packing of lies and hiding from the authorities.”

Mr Adey, of Queen Street, Grange Villa, and Miss Warren of Hexham, Washington, both deny murder. Miss Warren denies a second charge of witness intimidation.

The trial continues.