AN acquaintance of a man on trial again for the murder of Vikki Thompson in Ascott-under-Wychwood in 1995 told a jury yesterday that he saw another man acting strangely near to where she was attacked.

Kevin Flatman told Reading Crown Court that he was driving home when a man ran across the road ahead of a car in front of him, before making exaggerated gestures with his thumb to an apparently empty road, he said.

Mr Flatman reported the sighting to police days later after learning of the attack on the married mother-of-two who was battered while walking her dog. She later died in hospital.

Mark Weston, now 35, also of the village, was acquitted of her murder but is being retried after investigators claim to have found specks of Mrs Thompson’s blood on Weston’s boots which were initially missed. He denies the charge.

Driving home from work on the day of the attack, Mr Flatman said he saw a man on the verge, and that “the guy just ran across (the road) in front of the car in front of me and started making obvious gestures of hitchhiking”.

He said the man was not Mark Weston, and it was not a road you saw hitchhikers on.

The trial continues.