A jury was told yesterday how a man accused of murder caused problems for his ex-wife and her new husband.

Allan Kimber, 41, denies shooting Gary Morgan, 37, in the neck near the victim's home at Danesbrook Farm, Stanton St John, near Oxford, on October 17 last year.

Mr Morgan had married Kimber's former wife Helen and the trio all used to work for the Stagecoach bus company, the jury at Oxford Crown Court heard.

Stagecoach union rep John Chaplin told the court the company was a "rumour factory" and everyone knew Kimber, of Stert Street, Abingdon, had been thrown out by Mrs Morgan, whom he had met at the depot in May 2000.

They had married the following summer, but it lasted just a year.

Mr Chaplin said Kimber, a bus driver, was temporarily removed from his duties after the split because he was deemed unfit to drive.

He told the jury how, when Mr and Mrs Morgan started a relationship, there were "quite a few problems" involving the three of them, including cases of bus- blocking.

Mr Chaplin explained how Kimber was in charge of arranging buses in the yard and would purposely block Mr and Mrs Morgan's buses in.

He said: "They would not be able to get out at the correct times, which would make them late for their duties.

"I believe management got involved in the end."

The court also heard how Kimber had given varying accounts of the cause of an eye injury, which led to him being signed off from work on October 17 - the day of the shooting.

The prosecution allege the injury was caused by the defendant firing the gun, but Kimber said it was caused by cigarette ash getting into his eye.

He went to his GP with the eye injury just hours after Mr Morgan's death and was referred to an opthamologist, Bianca Sallustio, at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary.

Yesterday she told the jury she had removed "20 or more multiple brown particles" from his left eye, which were embedded in it, and had not questioned his explanation of how the injury occurred.

Kimber told a nurse at the hospital that he was inside a car when a cigarette was thrown out of the window and rebounded in, catching his eye.

But Mr Chaplin, who said Kimber had a reputation at work for being a "wind-up merchant", said: "He told me he was on his motorbike travelling between 60 and 65mph and had his visor open.

"He said there was a car in front of him and a cigarette was thrown out of the car and it went into his visor and caught his eye."

The case continues.