A cocaine user shattered a woman’s skull in a “savage sexual and physical assault” and left her for dead near a children’s play park, a court has been told.

A jury heard that just hours after Zakarya Etarghi brutally attacked the woman in her 50s he pleaded with friends to get him on a lorry to escape the country.

The woman was left with life-threatening injuries after an incident near the park in Leicester last August, the city’s crown court was told.

The prosecution told jurors they would need to “steel themselves” to hear the details.

The woman suffered massive facial trauma, a complex open skull fracture with bleeding to the brain, life-threatening low blood pressure, spinal fractures and significant brain injuries.

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DNA from blood in the defendant’s flat matched that of the woman, prosecutors said.

Jurors heard that the defendant denied attempted murder and rape, and had said someone else must have been responsible.

The court was told Mr Etarghi sent “incriminating” messages to friends afterwards, including one that said: “I can just see it, today is the day I get nicked.”

Other messages, sent on WhatsApp, indicated he would have “handed myself in by now” if his “bro wasn’t coming out” and that he was “looking at 10 to 20” – which the prosecution suggested referred to years in prison.

The jury also heard the defendant was searching the internet looking for the latest “crime news” and paying “close attention” to the incident in Cedar Park within six hours of the incident.

Opening the case against the 24-year-old, prosecutor William Harbage QC said the woman’s injuries were life-altering.

“There were no eyewitnesses to what took place, but female screams were heard on more than one occasion during the early hours of that night,” he said.

“You will have little doubt that she was the victim of two crimes in the incident that night – firstly a rape, an appalling sexual assault, and secondly attempted murder, an equally horrendous physical assault.”

The court heard Mr Etarghi had said in a police interview that both he and the woman had taken cocaine.

Mr Harbage added: “The defendant does admit that he was there present in the park that night, he admits that he met and drank with [the alleged victim], he admits that they kissed and touched each other in a sexual way.

“He claims he did nothing wrong at all that night, that he used no force on her at all, he left her in the park uninjured in any way.

“He says, by coincidence, someone else must have come along just after he had left, and that someone else must be responsible for the savage attack.”

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Mr Etarghi, of no fixed address, denies rape and attempted murder.

The trial continues.