NEIGHBOURS who live near the house where Barrow dad Andy Hackett was allegedly murdered heard a disturbance on the night he died, a jury has been told.

A number of statements were taken from residents living in Gloucester Street after 31-year-old Mr Hackett died at the home of Lee Black on December 10 of last year.

During the trial at Preston Crown Court, in which Mark Bartholomew is charged with murder and Black is charged with assisting an offender, prosecutor Nigel Power QC read out some of the statements from neighbours.

Chantelle Hackett, who is not related to Mr Hackett, often stayed at a friend's house which is next door to Black's home.

In her statement she told police: "I knew the next-door neighbour Lee Black who was called Blacky. I would often hear shouting at least twice a week; Blacky shouting at someone else in the house.

"I could hear banging against the walls as if someone was being thrown around."

Another neighbour Lesley Viceroy said on the night Mr Hackett died she heard two men arguing at Black's home.

"My dog wanted to go outside at 12.50am so I opened the back door," she said.

"I heard two male voices shouting. I recognised one of the voices as being the male who lives there. He was the louder one.

"Five minutes later my other dog wanted to go out. I heard the same two voices which were now even louder."

The prosecution allege Mr Hackett was murdered in the early hours of the morning. Bartholomew, 40, claims he was involved in a struggle with Mr Hackett upstairs in the house but Mr Hackett then went downstairs with Black.

Meanwhile 39-year-old Black claims he heard a disturbance during the night but thought nothing of it. He says he woke in the morning and cleaned some blood up from the bottom of the stairs, assuming someone had had a nose bleed, and only then did he find Mr Hackett's body.

The jury has heard Black called paramedics at 6.25am and when they arrived 20 minutes later they found Mr Hackett's body in the back alley. He died from a single stab wound to the heart.

A short while later Bartholomew was found unconscious near Cavendish Dock.

Police later found a blood-stained bedsheet, a hoodie stained with Mr Hackett's blood and a knife inside a plastic bag in the water.

Both defendants deny the offences. The trial continues.