A SOUTHAMPTON dad was followed into the alleyway where he died by a cage fighter who had started a relationship with his ex-partner, a court heard.

A neighbour told a court how she saw Kevin Wyeth talking to his ex girlfriend Samantha Slater outside her Woolston flat just hours before his body was found.

Yesterday Winchester Crown Court was told that after 31-year-old Kevin, a Saints groundsman, walked away his alleged killer Damon Wright was seen walking in the same direction.

Jurors heard evidence from Alison Gulliford, who lived near Miss Slater at Highlands House, who told how she saw a man come from behind the recycling bins and walk the same way as she saw Kevin go moments before - towards Defender Road.

Initially she did not know who the man, wearing a hooded top with the hood up, was - but that Miss Slater told her that it was Wright.

Ms Gulliford also told the court that she had been with Kevin and Sam when they had been talking and explained that he was asking about his children.

She said: “I remember Sam telling him that she hated him. He said he loved her. He was crying.

“I told him to go because he just recently got access to his children and he was due to see them and I told him he would make the situation worse.”

As previously reported, Kevin was found beaten to death in an alleyway between Defender Road and Tankerville Road, in the early hours of August 24 last year.

The prosecution said that he was hit with such “severe force” that his face was shattered and his airways swelled, leaving him with “significant brain damage”.

Yesterday morning, the jury of eight men and four women, along with the judge Guy Boney QC and the defendant, were taken to the scene where Kevin’s body was found by paramedics.

They were taken to other areas important to the prosecution’s case, including Highlands House, where Kevin was last seen alive, to help familiarise themselves with the area.

Wright, 32, of no fixed address, denies murder.

The trial continues.