“I DIDN’T want to hurt my granddad at all, I love him”.

Those were the words of a teenage girl accused of plotting with her family to kill the pensioner so they could get their hands on his money.

The 16-year-old was giving evidence at Winchester Crown Court for her own defence case and told jurors how she would “never attempt to harm” the 89-year-old.

The court has previously heard how the girl, aged 15 at the time, and her sister, aged 13, allegedly used bricks to hit their grandfather across the head during a savage attack outside his home.

Recalling the night of November 15 last year the girl said her elder brother had punched their grandfather in the head, but she had not attacked him, She said: “I put my brick on the floor and my sister really reluctantly tapped him in the back of the head, she didn’t want to hurt him.”

The teenager said she had initially lied, claiming her granddad had fallen over outside his bungalow in a village near Winchester, because she was scared of losing her family.

She went on to admit that she had been researching ways to hurt someone on the internet weeks before the attack.

Asked by Stuart Jones QC about searching ‘Where can you hurt someone the most by hitting them?’, she replied: “I just heard conversations they were having, not particular people just conversations about hurting grandad”. She denied doing any other similar searches.

A 49-year-old woman, her daughters aged 14 and 16, her 19-year-old son and his 17-yearold girlfriend, deny charges of conspiring to murder the pensioner and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. None of the defendants, who all come from Eastleigh, can be named for legal reasons.

Proceeding.