A mother accused of murder and attempted murder claimed today she played no part in Jack Treeby being run over and killed or his brother Gary being blasted in the leg and beaten - and was on her way to church.

Charity Treeby said she had been going to visit her sister-in-law Mary Treeby in Quarry Road, Tovil, on December 27 when she heard screaming.

“I just saw people running and screaming,” she told Maidstone Crown Court. “I come across someone being beaten on the floor. I didn’t know who it was at the time.

“I was pretty close to him. I realised who it was. I saw three or four people, all in dark clothes with things over their heads. I was screaming: 'Leave him alone.’

“I didn’t recognise any of the people beating him.”

Asked if she held Gary’s hand as he lay injured, she wept: “I could have done. I know I tried to help.”

She denied wanting Gary to be beaten or encouraging anybody to strike him.

Asked if she, as Gary claimed in evidence, beat him with a shovel, she replied: “No, sir.”

The mother-of-three, 51, said she and her husband Bill had set off that evening to go to a church meeting at Chart Sutton.

She said after they left their home, Fairhaven Farm in Queen Street, Paddock Wood, in their Mondeo, her husband received a call from Gary.

Her husband told her, she said, they were going to meet and she believed he was going to Broadview Farm, Lidsing, where Gary lived.

She claimed she asked her husband to drop her off in near to Quarry Road so that she could visit Mary. It was then, she claimed, she saw Gary being attacked.

Asked if she afterwards set fire to the Mondeo, she said: “No sir, I wouldn’t know how to do it.”

Treeby said she ran off “in hysterics” and went home, where she was later arrested by armed police.

Asked if she knew anything about Jack being killed, she said: “No, sir, I first heard about his death when I was arrested.”

She said of her husband and sons Billy, 30, and George, 23, being charged with murder and attempted murder: “I can’t describe how I felt knowing my husband or my kids could do something like that.”

Bill Treeby, his wife Charity, 51, and sons Billy and George, 23, all of Queen Street, Paddock Wood, deny murdering Jack Treeby, attempting to murder Gary Treeby and Jack Treeby Jnr, causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Gary Treeby and attempting to inflict grievous bodily harm on Jack Treeby Jnr.

The trial continues.