A teenage girl struck by a car at a north Belfast flashpoint has described how the vehicle drove over her legs and trapped her underneath it.

Jurors in the trial of an Orangeman who drove into a crowd of protesting nationalists over a banned loyalists parade 'gasped' when seeing the moment his car collided with the 16-year-old.

One juror clasped her hands over her mouth as the police CCTV footage was played for the first time to the Belfast Crown Court trial of 63-year-old John Alexander Aughey.

Aughey, from Brae Hill Park, Belfast, denies a total of six charges, including dangerous driving causing grievous bodily injury to a then 16-year-old Phoebe Clawson on July 13 2015 at the Ardoyne shops.

Later the jury watched a taped police interview of the teen sitting in a wheelchair. She broke down as she described the instant Aughey's car caught her from behind and drove over her legs, trapping her.

Recovering in her Ardoyne home after two weeks in hospital following a five and a half hour operation on her "shattered pelvis" and fractured collar bone and ankle, the teenager told police she thought the car might move again and she "would have been dead".

In the 24-minute intervew the teenager explained that as she lay under the red Nissan Pulsar car she could hear people shouting.

She said she tried to move as her head was beside the wheel and she believed "if it went over me one more time I would have been dead".

Ms Clawson also later explained that she had been running away from the car and as she turned her head to look back the vehicle hit her in the back and she fell to the ground, "and then I went under", and ended up face down on the road.

It was at this stage the police came and turned the car over.

One officer told her "everything was going to be ok" as she asked for a priest and her "mummy". The teenager said at the time she was "panicking", repeating again that she "thought I was going to die".

Under cross-examination from defence QC Greg Berry, Ms Clawson said she remembered a bottle being thrown at the car before the driver began turning it, with the engine revving.

However, while she said the bottle had hit the windscreen, Mr Berry pointed out that CCTV footage showed the bottle bouncing off the roof of the Nissan.

Ms Clawson, who also described Aughey as "laughing" while sitting in traffic in his car, said this was the only missile she saw being thrown, adding that she did not see anyone approach the car beforehand.

Later Mr Berry suggested that far from laughing or smiling, Aughey "was extremely worried about what was going to happen to him when in his car".

Today Judge Smyth told the jury of eight women and four men that it was not the prosecution case, nor have they alleged, that the defendant "caused any of these injuries deliberately".

The trial continues tomorrow when the jury will hear evidence via a live link-up from Australia from another teenager who was also injured.