A hospital registrar was 'shocked' by the severity of a head injury suffered by a woman who was raped and then savagely attacked in a park, an attempted murder trial heard.
The half-naked woman was covered in blood and barely conscious when a police officer arrived at the play area in the early hours of Friday, August 3 last year.
Sergeant Victoria Lucas told a jury at Leicester Crown Court that the woman was breathing but not moving on the ground when she arrived.
The officer described 'too much blood' on the female’s head to tell where it was coming from. She administered first aid until medics arrived.
Sgt Lucas said: “She was trying to roll on her back and I was trying to keep her on her side.”
Zakarya Etarghi, aged 24, who has strong links to Stoke-on-Trent and specifically Middleport, denies raping and attempting to murder the woman, who is in her early 50s.
The prosecution say the woman suffered multiple injuries, including fractures, and was 'left for dead' at the scene at Cedar Road play park, off Evington Road, Leicester.
The injured woman was rushed to the Queen’s Medical Centre, in Nottingham.
She underwent life-saving surgery to repair her shattered skull, which had to be partially rebuilt.
A statement from a registrar, Dr Laura Bolton, was read out in court.
She was on duty with the trauma team that morning and described the woman arriving on a stretcher 'covered in blood' with dirt and grass on her naked body.
Dr Bolton stated: “She had a large significant wound to the centre of her forehead. It was a wound I was shocked by and have never seen anything quite like it before in my experience.”
The registrar described the woman as also having suffered an internal injury in the groin area.
Consultant surgeon, Dale Gardiner, in a statement read out to the court, described the patient as having suffered 'massive facial trauma' including a complex open skull fracture, a brain injury and facial fractures, spinal fractures and contusion of the brain and left lung.
He said part of the skull was recreated with metal and described the injuries the victim sustained as 'life-threatening' and 'life-changing'.
But for surgical intervention she would have died.
The woman was in intensive care and in a critical condition for some time.
The prosecutor, William Harbage QC, said it was 'miraculous' that she had survived.
The defendant claims he had been drinking with the alleged victim in the park before the attack in the early hours of the morning.
Following his arrest, he told the police they engaged in sexual activity before he left her in the park unhurt.
Etarghi, of no fixed address, is claiming that someone else must have attacked her at a later stage.
The court heard the defendant fled Leicester on the day of the alleged attack and stayed 60 miles away in Stoke-on-Trent for the next fortnight until his arrest.
The trial continues.
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