The 13-year-old daughter of a man who died after being kicked and punched outside his home told yesterday how she lashed out at his attackers to try to save him.

Amy Newlove watched from the driveway of the family home in Warrington, Cheshire, as her father, Garry, 47, confronted drunken youths who he believed had just vandalised his wife’s car.

She saw him surrounded by half a dozen teenagers in the lamp-lit street, who then punched him and kneed him in the back, forcing him to the ground.

Amy told police that she had run to her father’s prone body to protect him from any further beating.

“People were crowding around my Dad,” she said. “Some of them were just walking off but one of them was turning back for more and was still trying to kick him. I was calling them freaks and pushed the one who was coming back. I just closed my eyes and hit something. I kept hitting. I turned around and my Dad was on the floor on his side, with blood coming from his head.”

Earlier the jury at Chester Crown Court was told by Zoe Newlove, 18, Amy’s sister, that the gang was kicking her father’s head “like a football” as they laughed and swore. Mr Newlove, a sales manager, who also had a third daughter, never regained consciousness and died two days later in hospital.

Two brothers, aged 15 and 16, and two 17-year-olds, who cannot be named for legal reasons, deny murder. They share the dock with Adam Swellings, 19, of Crewe, Cheshire, who denies murder but has pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

The jury listened to a police interview with Amy before defence barristers questioned her via video link about the events of August 10. Her mother, Helen, 44, listened from the public gallery, where she was comforted by family members.

During the interview Amy wiped away tears as she decribed how she heard noises and looked out of her bedroom window to see youths running down the street. She saw one kick her mother’s Renault Scenic, leaving a dent.

“I went to Mum and said, ‘Someone has just kicked your car door’, and Mum shouted down to Dad. She said, ‘Garry, get outside’. I went downstairs and told Dad what had happened. Dad went outside and I was just behind.”

She described her father, in pyjama bottoms and barefoot, checking the damage. “He was saying, ‘Come on and tell me who has kicked the car.’ They were laughing at him and saying, ‘Go home old man’. Zoe shouts at my Dad, ‘Come back home — there is no point’. The next thing they were fighting with my Dad. Six or seven turned around to fight with him.”

A female police officer asked Amy in the interview whether she had actually seen anybody kicking her father. The teenager paused before nodding and whispering: “Three or four”.

Earlier Zoe gave evidence from behind a curtain so that she would not have to look at the five defendants. She said: “There were four or five of them kicking [my father] in the upper body, but mainly his head. They were kicking him like they would a football and laughing.”

The trial continues.

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