A HOME office pathologist told a murder trial that a teenager, beaten up and left for dead in a children’s park, had died from pneumonia.

Luke Woolf died in hospital several months after he had suffered severe head injuries at a house in Northam, Southampton, that caters for single and homeless people.

Jurors have heard the teenager had been asked to leave the property in Radcliffe Road because he had failed to keep to the regulations but had not handed in his keys.

A few days later, however, he got back into the property and was preparing to sleep in the lounge.

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Scott Townson, who was the only person living in the house at the time, told police he had been punched and pinned against a wall by an intruder as he entered the room.

He kicked and punched the other person and did not realise it was Luke until he switched the light on, the court has heard.

Salisbury Crown Court has been told the teenager was then dragged across the road and left in the park where paramedics found him following a 999 call.

Jurors heard how the teenager was taken to Southampton General Hospital but never regained consciousness and died on March 30, 2009.

Home Office pathologist Deborah Cook told the court that the cause of death was pneumonia resulting from a persistent coma that followed a subdural haemorrhage.

She said: “After surgery, he was confined to bed. He wasn’t breathing freely and he wasn’t able to move about. In these circumstances, patients are at high risk of developing pneumonia.”

Townson, 21, of Radcliffe Road, denies murder.