An eyewitness told police officers investigating an alleged attempted murder: "I thought it was just kids mucking about."

Simon Hicks was one of a number of people enjoying the sunshine in People’s Park, Banbury, on June 11 last year when Danils Bogdancevs was punched, kicked and stabbed.

Prosecutors say the man was assaulted in a ‘brutal and vicious’ group attack. Three teenagers, who we cannot identify for legal reasons, deny attempted murder and wounding with intent.

READ MORE: Park stabbing victim was 'gurgling blood', crown court hears

Giving evidence at Oxford Crown Court on Wednesday (March 15), Mr Hicks told the defence barrister for one of the children: “I saw one person attacking another person. That’s all I saw.”

“So far as the ‘attack’ is concerned, only one person was involved in that from what you saw?” asked John Ryder KC, for the boy – ‘X’ – accused of having the leading role in the attack.

The witness replied: “Yes, from what I saw.”

Mr Ryder asked: “For example, you did not see a group of young men surrounding the victim and kicking him and things like that; you did not see that?” He said he did not.

“You didn’t see any weapon used?” the barrister asked. Again, Mr Hicks said: “No.”

“And you didn’t, for example, catch a glimpse of anything glinting in the sunshine?” Mr Ryder continued.

“No,” the witness replied.

The defence barrister, whose client ‘X’ is said to have been the one Mr Hicks saw fighting with the ‘tall’ victim, reminded him of the witness statement he had given to detectives investigating the stabbing.

In it, he had said: “I didn’t like seeing the incident. I just wanted to get out of the park. I thought it was just kids mucking about and the victim was just going to go home and cry to mum.”

From the witness box, Mr Hicks said: “When I look back on it that’s still how I see it.”

Previously, the jury has heard the victim suffered six stab wounds to his abdomen – puncturing his lungs and putting him in hospital.

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Later, jurors heard a statement read from Sheila Peach, who had been visiting her daughter in Banbury on the weekend of the assault and had gone to the People's Park.

She described her attention being drawn to one of the young men involved in the altercation – understood to be boy X – as he ‘had his trousers down so low you could see his bum and black boxers hanging out’.

The same boy walked past where she and her husband were sitting, she said, their daughter having taken dog Tilly for a walk around the park with her partner.

As he passed by he had ‘said something to us similar to “sorry about that, he called me a n***** to my face”’.

Mrs Peach added: “I didn’t think anything of it at the time as I hadn’t seen anything untoward. He appeared calm and collected." The man was 'polite and well-spoken', she said.

The trial continues.