A JURY in a trial of a man accused of raping a teenager in a Southampton park are set to hear evidence from a DNA expert today.

It comes after members of the jury yesterday watched a police interview of the 18-year-old victim, who told officers she thought she was "going to die" during the attack in Riverside Park.

The court had earlier had how both the prosecution and defence accepted the teenager had been raped.

But the jury heard that the man accused of attacking her, Jozef Janczura, 34, denied any involvement in the incident, on December 2 last year.

Yesterday, in a video of the victim's police interview, the university student said she had left her friend's halls of residence to get some fresh air when she thought she was being followed.

The court heard as she walked along Woodmill Lane she was grabbed from behind, dragged into Riverside Park, strangled and then raped.

She said: “He [the attacker] kept saying ‘shut up’. I kept coming in and out [of conciousness]. I was thinking of my family and friends and then I would wake up and remember where I was.

“He was over me and had his hands round my neck and it felt like his entire body weight was on me and I couldn’t breathe.

“I felt like there was nothing I could do. I felt like that’s it, like I’m going to die right here.”

During the opening of the trial, at Southampton Crown Court, prosecutor Martyn Booth told jury members that DNA found on the victim’s body matched that of Janczura’s - saying the chances of the DNA swabs being left by someone other than the defendant or someone unrelated to him amounted “to odds of a billion to one”.

He added: “To put that into context that is 1,000 million to one.

“It is frankly difficult to imagine longer odds even if you tried.”

Mr Booth said the DNA examined included blood, allegedly from the defendant, on the jumper the victim was wearing at the time of the attack.

Mr Booth said CCTV footage from the area appeared to show Janczura walking in the area of the attack.

Janczura, of Laburnum Road, Southampton, denies one allegation of rape and one allegation of assault occasioning actual bodily harm (ABH).

The trial continues.