An eight-year-old has told a jury how she saw a man trying to snatch a nine-year-old girl from the street in broad daylight.

The child said they were on a shopping errand when she saw the other youngster being grabbed from behind in Ashton Keynes.

Riding instructor Alexander Benfield, 25, denies charges of attempted kidnap and actual bodily harm after the schoolgirl got grazed knees.

The younger girl said she was walking behind the other two, one of whom was out of sight, when a man came up behind them near Park Place in the village.

“She was walking in front of me and the man caught her,” she told police in a video interview played at Swindon Crown Court.

“She screamed but the man didn’t say anything: he was silent.

“And then she got a grazed knee when he dragged her across the floor as she was too heavy with the shopping bag.

“She dropped the shopping bag when he was dragging her and then he dropped her and ran around the corner.

“I was getting really scared and then when she got dropped she put her arm round my shoulder and we ran home together.”

The girl said the man, who was wearing a blue T-shirt, jeans, grey baseball cap and black sunglasses, grabbed the other girl by the shoulder and bottom.

She said he lifted her clear off the ground before dropping her as they were both screaming, then he ran off.

The third girl said she hadn’t seen the incident, as she had gone ahead on her scooter, but heard the screams and ran to help.

She said moments before she had seen a man in a grey baseball cap, sunglasses, blue T-shirt and jeans walking past her towards the other two.

All three said the man they saw looked like he was in his 40s, with pale skin and was quite tall.

Earlier David Reid, prosecuting, told the court CCTV in the village picked up a black Vauxhall Astra bearing the same number plate as Benfield’s.

He said footage showed the driver in a blue T-shirt similar to the one the defendant had on when he got to work in Braydon that morning.

CCTV from Rein and Shine stables showed him in the top, baseball cap, with grey jodhpurs or tight trousers when he arrived and left just before midday.

He said he had those on when he bought a shirt in Cirencester, shortly after the alleged incident on Saturday, July 8, and when he got back to the yard.

After pulling up in the car park at about 1.30pm he was seen fiddling with the new purchase, which he was wearing when he went home at 6pm.

Mr Reid said a police search of the tack room at the stables found a blue T-shirt, similar to the one in the CCTV, in a green carrier bag.

When Benfield was arrested the day after he insisted he had been wearing the red shirt all day on Saturday.

He also said he had not been to the village where his grandparents lived since the Thursday before and the car must be someone else who had cloned his vehicle.

Benfield, of Lawrence Road, Cirencester, denies the charges and the trial continues.