A WITNESS in the Reece James murder trial said the noise outside his flat on the night of his death was like a "herd of elephants".

Malandra Nippard, 21, told the jury at Winchester Crown Court today that she was visiting a friend in the flat next door in the early hours of July 25, when she heard shouting from the street outside.

Questioned by prosecutor Timothy Mousley QC, she said she was putting her one-year-old daughter to bed when the group of men who had been shouting started repeatedly pressing buzzers for the flats.

She heard a bang as if Mr James' door, to flat two, had opened, then the front door.

"I didn't hear much because I was concentrating on putting my little girl to bed, but there was a noise like a herd of elephants running down the communal hall, straight into flat two," she said.

Miss Nippard also said, after hearing a loud bang, "like a door slam", she heard men "stomping" down the hall out into the road, after which they headed off towards the precinct, giggling.

Under cross examination from David Nathan QC, representing 33-year-old Wayne Stephenson, of London, she was shown CCTV footage of three men walking running from the flats away from the precinct, and of another group passing in the opposite direction.

She admitted she couldn't be sure which group had been laughing as she hadn't seen them.

Stephenson, Keifer Hutchinson, 22 and Jarome Parkinson, 24, of London, and Kieron Wallington, 29, and Terri Campbell, 22, of Bournemouth, deny murdering the 21-year-old in Roumelia Lane on July 25 last year.

The trial continues.