Sara suffered more than 70 injuries said to have been inflicted over the course of several weeks when she was found dead in her home in Woking, Surrey, on August 10 last year.
Her dad Urfan Sharif, 42, is on trial at the Old Bailey accused of his daughter’s murder, alongside Sara’s stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, and uncle, Faisal Malik, 29.
Giving evidence today, former upstairs neighbour Rebecca Spencer described the ‘constant screaming and crying’ when she lived above the Sharif family’s former flat in West Byfleet, Surrey, between 2018 and 2020.
She told jurors that Sara’s father worked as a taxi driver, often leaving Batool at home.
Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC asked: ‘What, if anything, you could see or hear from that flat downstairs?’
Speaking from behind a screen, Ms Spencer said: ‘Just crying. And then rattling the doors, there was a lot of doors slamming, also the stepmother screaming…
‘I would hear the stepmother shout at Sara because she shouted her name.’
Ms Spencer went on to describe hearing ‘a kind of thwack’ accompanied by the sound of ‘telling off’ and ‘screaming’.
She said: ‘The family were never quiet when it came to closing doors. It almost sounded like they were locked in a bedroom, the constant rattling of the door, trying to get it open.’
The rattling noises were frequent and normally heard with Batool screaming, Ms Spencer added.
‘I could tell that she (Batool) had lost her temper, there could have been a bang that could have been a smack, I don’t know,’ she said.
Mr Emlyn Jones KC asked if she had ever gone to the flat below hers because of the noise.
Ms Spencer said: ‘Yes, on one occasion it was fever pitch so I went downstairs and said “is everything ok in here”?’
Batool replied ‘yes’ before slamming the door in her face, she said.
On what noises had prompted her to go downstairs, she said: ‘Just general constant screaming, crying.’
When pressed about what kind of swear words Batool used when speaking to children, Ms Spencer said ‘f***ing bastards’.
She said she came to dread the end of the school day and the summer holidays.
Ms Spencer recalled hosting a party in the communal garden in September 2020 and said she spoke to Sara.
She said: ‘Sara was lovely, she was taking part in all of the games for them all and she spent most of her time actually chatting to me rather than playing with the other children.’
The court heard Ms Spencer, who worked from home, had thought about making a formal report about the family downstairs but ultimately decided against it.
Police found Sara’s body in a bunk bed in her home, following a call from Sharif in Pakistan saying he ‘beat her up too much’ for being ‘naughty’, the court has heard.
It is alleged Sara had died two days before and the defendants had booked flights out of the country within hours of her death.
Forensic pathologist Dr Nathaniel Cary has told the court that some of Sara’s external injuries, which included dozens of bruises, grazes and burns, were the result of ‘repetitive blunt trauma’ and ‘blunt impact or solid pressure, or both’.
Her injuries included significant damage internally, including bleeding on her brain, multiple bruises on her lungs and multiple skeletal injuries, jurors were told.
Previously, the prosecution told jurors the 10-year-old had suffered ‘probable human bite marks’, a burn from a domestic iron and scalding from hot water.
Traces of the schoolgirl’s blood were discovered on the kitchen floor, a vacuum cleaner and a cricket bat following a police search of the family home along with ‘homemade hoods’ used to restrain her, the prosecution said.
All three defendants, of Woking, have denied murder and causing or allowing the death of a child between December 16, 2022, and August 9, 2023.
The trial continues.
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