A WOMAN awoken by the sound of glass smashing and a car alarm going off witnessed the fight which resulted in a woman’s death, a court heard.

Mother-of-three Michelle Cooper, 40, suffered fatal injuries during an incident in Beach Way, Jaywick, in the early hours of April 23 last year.

A murder trial is underway at Chelmsford Crown Court.

Giving evidence from the witness box, a neighbour reported witnessing a fight between a group of “between ten and 12 people” from her window.

Answering questions put to her by prosecutor Wayne Cleaver, the witness said she saw “one lad” get kicked in the head.

“He was kicked and his head bounced off the wall,” she said.

The witness told the jury she then witnessed a “woman in a red coat” swinging her arms into the crowd “to try and get into the group”.

She said a boy in a grey top threw a punch and she fell backwards.

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The witness said one of the group kicked the woman while she lay on the ground.

Ms Cooper, who worked as a gym instructor in Sudbury, was left unconscious following the attack and was pronounced dead at Colchester Hospital two days later.

Bobby Nethercott, 31, of Park Square East, Jaywick, Demi Cole, 21, of Beach Way, Jaywick, Charlie Whittaker, 24, of Bemerton Gardens, Kirby Cross, and Jordan Stanley, 20, of Masterman Road, London, each deny a joint charge of murder.

Nethercott, Whittaker and Stanley also deny two charges of assault causing actual bodily harm.

Nethercott denies two separate charges of assault causing actual bodily harm, while Cole has admitted assaulting Elise Cooper.

Opening the prosecution case to the jury, Mr Cleaver said: “It all arises from wholly unprovoked and gratuitous violence on the streets of Jaywick during the night of April 23.

“These four defendants were involved at various stages in that violence.

“It resulted in thankfully relatively-minor injuries to four people at the scene, but tragically it also caused the untimely-death of Michelle Cooper, a mother who was then aged just 40, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time that night.”

The trial continues.