A WOMAN asked her best friend if she thought her estranged husband was capable of killing her just months before he allegedly beat her to death, a court has heard.

Shaun Dyson, 28, is accused of killing 30-year-old Lucy-Anne Rushton, known as Lucy, by repeatedly stamping or jumping on her in a “prolonged and severe beating” at her Suffolk Road home in June.

Dyson, of Bury Hill Close, Abbotts Ann, denies murder but admits manslaughter.

Earlier in the trial, which is now into its second week, jurors at Winchester Crown Court heard how Lucy had told friends that she believed Dyson planned to kill her, and that she thought he had prepared a bag for the purpose with clothes and weapons.

On Tuesday, the court was told by one of Lucy’s best friends how the victim had once headed to an underpass in an attempt to find the belongings.

Lia Branco, whose wedding Lucy was a bridesmaid at, recalled receiving a phone call from Lucy in March in which her friend described her search for the bag.

Lia said: “She got to an underpass. She phoned Shaun and said, ‘where’s the bag? Where’s the bag?’

“Shaun was saying ‘you’re getting warmer, you’re getting colder,’ and then she realised that he was around.

“She said she was screaming at him on the phone and then he just appeared at the end of the underpass.”

Lia recalled Lucy saying she was “frightened” of her estranged husband around this time, adding: “She said, ‘do you think Shaun is capable of killing me?’ and I said yes.”

Lucy and her estranged husband’s relationship had been “quite good in the beginning” but become “volatile” in later years, Lia said.

She added: “It got really nasty. He’d call her a slag all the time and ring her non-stop. I remember her telling me he would stalk the house at night.”

Lia also remembered an incident a few years prior, in which she “saw Shaun push Lucy so hard she flew through the air” and then grabbed her by the throat.

She and her partner had been having drinks at Dyson and Lucy’s previous address, in King Arthur’s Way, when the defendant and the victim started arguing.

The pair then began “pushing and shoving each other” as Lucy asked Dyson to leave the house, but he refused.

Lia said: “I saw Shaun push Lucy so hard she flew through the air. It was so hard. She hit into the wall, a concrete wall.”

She said that the defendant then grabbed his then-wife by the throat with both hands for about two seconds and was “extremely” angry.

It was noted that the four of them had been drinking at the time and Lia admits that “we all had a few” drinks but that Lucy “wasn’t that drunk at the time that night.

The argument was believed to be about Lucy’s suspicions that Dyson had been having an affair, something that he said “wasn’t true” at the time.

Dyson denies murder and the trial continues.