SHOCKED people have revealed how they witnessed schoolgirl Emily Jones being killed in a Bolton park on Mothers' Day and tried to help.

Lynsey Canty, whose husband Tony ran after and caught knifewoman Eltiona Skana, told police how she called after him: "Please be careful, don't do anything stupid."

A jury at Minshull Street Crown Court were played a recording of a police interview Mrs Canty gave.

She added that, as he gave chase, she realised the little girl was seriously hurt.

"I thought he didn't fully grasp how much danger he was putting himself in so I was frightened for him," she said.

She and her husband were in Queens Park on Mothers' Day when they saw what they thought was a woman assaulting a little girl before running off and Mr Canty decided to go after her. Mrs Canty stayed where Mark Jones sat on the ground cradling his daughter and gave him a muslin square to try and stem the blood.

"I could see people around.The little girl is on the floor. The man who I take to be her dad had his arms around her," she said.

"I think he didn't know what to do."

Mrs Canty went in search of her husband and found him sitting on top of Skana.

"She was delusional to me, you know, talking about my husband - "you are going, you killed my family, you are killing me" things like that. They were nonsense but she didn't look like she felt frightened of him. It was strange," said Mrs Canty.

Hassan Ahmed and his wife Florentina also saw the attack on Emily and noticed her bleeding but did not see a knife.

Mr Hassan said he had thought Skana, sat on a park bench with a hoody pulled up, was asleep when Emily went past her on her scooter, shouting "mum, mum" towards he mother, Sarah Barnes, who she had spotted running in the distance.

"She stand up, grabbed her and then spin her around and she got her neck ... and she pushed her in front," said Mr Hassan.

"The little girl doesn't do nothing. She doesn't move. It actually was very quick."

In a statement read out in court, the first paramedic on the scene, Matthew Hooper told how he saw Emily on the ground and arterial blood.

"At this point I didn't know what part had been stabbed but I knew it was serious," he said, adding that the seven-year-old child was unconscious, "lifeless" and in cardiac arrest.

Emily's father, Mark Jones, told him: "Some crazy woman has stabbed my girl in the neck."

Mr Hooper commenced CPR and an air ambulance rushed Emily to the Salford Royal Hospital but, after half an hour doctors were unable to restart her heart and she was pronounced dead.

Eliona Skana, aged 30, of Ernest Street, Bolton has admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility but denies murder.

The trial continues.