Tributes have been paid to Yvonne Heap who died a year ago after being found with multiple stab wounds outside an Oxford police station.

Ms Heap, 38, was found in a blue Citroen car outside Cowley police station on the afternoon of Saturday, April 26, last year.

She underwent emergency surgery, but died at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford two days later.

Mother-of-three, Ms Heap was born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. She was manager of Ladbrokes bookmakers in Hollow Way, just around the corner from Sunnyside, the quiet cul-de-sac where she lived until a few weeks before her death.

Yesterday, the anniversary of her death, friends and family of Ms Heap attended a memorial service at Our Lady Help of Christians Roman Catholic Church, across the road from Sunnyside.

Neighbour Georgina Alder, 58, of Sunnyside, said: "It's so hard to believe it was a year ago. I remember her as a very friendly, approachable person."

She said she had run into Ms Heap's eldest son Daniel, a Cheney School pupil, in Cowley recently.

"Daniel is a very nice young man. He is about to do his A-Levels and hoping to do a business course after that," she said.

Daniel and Ms Heap's other children Tomaz, nine, and Yasmeen, 12, are living with an aunt in Sandford-on-Thames.

Another neighbour, Mary Richards, 74, said: "I did not realise it was a year ago, until someone mentioned it to me a couple of days ago.

"I remember she was at work quite a lot, and she was always very pleasant.

"It was definitely a big shock, the last thing you would have thought would happen."

Ms Heap's former partner, Nahed Akhter, 41, of Sunnyside, Cowley, is due to stand trial for her murder at Oxford Crown Court on May 10.