Face-to-face with daughter's killer

A man today described how he came face to face with the stranger who it is alleged had just strangled his 12-year-old daughter.

Katerina Koneva had arrived home from school when she was attacked in the living room of her Hammersmith home. When her father Tracje Konev returned the killer was still in the building.

Pole Andrezej Kunowski, 47, is accused of strangling Katerina with a cord after barricading the door. When Mr Konev looked through the keyhole he knew his daughter was there because her school bag was on the sofa.

Then when he looked under the door he could see the black shoes her attacker was wearing.

The Old Bailey heard today how Kunowski leapt from a first-floor window of the flat leaving Katerina dying with the cord still wrapped tightly round her neck.

Mr Konev, a political refugee from Macedonia, told how he threw his bicycle aside after arriving outside his home in Iffley Road and finding the door wide open.

"I knew she was there because the bag was there, the man's shoes were there and that was the reason I couldn't open the door.

"I was pushing with all my energy and effort to open the door. My brain was going mad because I knew something was wrong. I was trying again and again to get in."

Kunowski denies murder but the jury heard his fingerprints were found on the window sill he leapt from and a single hair of his was on Katerina's cardigan. The chances it came from anyone else were one in a billion, the jury were told.

Mr Konev said he ran downstairs because it occurred to him the killer might try to escape. "I looked into the neighbour's garden and there in the shadow I saw someone coming up who had been hiding on his knees," he said. "I was one to two metres away, I saw him face to face. He didn't do anything. He was just looking. He was so cool."

As he asked the man what he was doing he saw a drop of blood below his left eye. "The blood was telling me something horrible," he said. He chased after the intruder and as

he grabbed him by the shoulder he produced a small knife which he tried to open. "I knew it wasn't the time to struggle with him but I didn't know what he had done. I pulled back," said Mr Konev.

"I wanted to deal with him but I wanted to see my daughter. I wanted to protect her."

The jury has been told of the chase through the streets of Hammersmith with Mr Konev pursuing his daughter's attacker before he hijacked a car which he then abandoned before escaping by bus.

Mr Konev then raced back to his flat where he discovered Katerina on her back, unconscious with the cord wrapped tightly round her neck. He broke down in sobs of tears as he described finding the unconscious body of his daughter.

"I tried first to release it but it was too tight and I could not get to it," he said. The case continues.