A WOMAN told a jury today how she saw an agitated man with bulging eyes and feared he was following her 13-year-old granddaughter.

The grandmother described the intense look on the man's face as he walked quickly past her parked car. Her granddaughter was delivering newspapers further up the road.

The prosecution claim this was Antoni Imiela, of Heathside, Appledore, near Ashford, in London Colney, Hertfordshire, in October 2002.

The grandmother, in the witness box at Maidstone Crown Court, said: "What drew my attention to him was the speed he was going, his demeanour. The look on his face was very intense, and his eyes were bulging out of his head.

"He was very sweaty and very agitated. I was so shocked I opened my car door. I just wanted to ask him what he was going to do."

After watching him for several minutes while the girl was delivering papers close by, in which she said he hid behind a tree, she collected her granddaughter and moved to a different part of the road so she could continue with her deliveries.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, then saw the man return to a car parked in front of her. She remembered the number plate and even spoke to the man who commented that she had her full beam headlights on as he drove off past her, the court was told.

She got her granddaughter to write down the number when she returned to the car and later passed this on to the police. It matched the number on Mr Imiela's M-reg Citroen Xantia, apart from one number which had been transposed.

"His demeanour was very disturbing," she told the court. "He was stumbling where he was leaning forward in such haste and looking behind him very nervously."

She noticed the silver arrow-shape on the front of the car, which she later matched to a Citroen.

She described him as aged in his 40s, with the look of a typical "paddy" or workman, about 5ft 6in or 5ft 7in tall, with short, disheveled grey hair. He was wearing a beige woolly jumper.

Mr Imiela, 49, denies nine charges of rape, one of attempted rape, indecent assault and kidnap.

His first attack is alleged to have been the rape of a 10-year-old girl on the Stanhope estate at Ashford.

The trial continues.