A woman told police she spotted a man wearing a woolly hat acting in an agitated manner in the area and apparently watching some children going home from school in the run up to Lauren's death.Detective Superintendent Andy Tattersall of Greater Manchester Police said yesterday, "We have now received a number of confirmed sightings of Lauren on Thursday evening. It is believed her body had been covered by leaves and twigs. It was just 200 yards from her home.An autopsy is being held to establish the cause of her death. Lauren's grandfather, Barry Smith, discovered her body in a wooded area adjacent to Sanderson Street in Leigh, at 2.30am. North Wales Police put out a nationwide alert for Nuttall earlier this week amid fears he had returned to his native Wigan in Greater Manchester. Warrants were later executed in the town where Nuttall has associates but detectives have found no trace of him. They think he may be sleeping rough in a stolen car. Manchester United fan Lauren - described by her family neighbours as a "tomboy" - went missing on Thursday after she spent the evening playing football with her friends near her home.
When she didn't return home by 8pm her family became concerned and started to look for her. Her mother called police to report her missing from the family home on Twist Lane at 10.13pm.Officers searched the area surrounding her home, helped by her family and members of the public and a police helicopter helped with the search. Geoffrey Nuttall, 44, is suspected of trying to strangle a 30-year-old woman at knifepoint in front of her four-year-old son and molesting another victim in a separate attack. "We are trying to stop assaults, abusive language and vomiting and urinating in people's doorways," he said. "They are very well spoken but they are causing chaos and setting fires on the beach."But public schools have reacted angrily to suggestions that their pupils are to blame. Dick Davison, spokesman for the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, which represents public schools, said: "The notion that it is just privileged youngsters from independent schools who cause this sort of trouble and drink a bit too much is a convenient stereotype."His views were echoed by Sheila Cooper, general secretary of the Girls Schools' Association. "It is unfortunate to tar every school with that brush," she said "It is going a bit over the top.
Obviously we would be very concerned if our pupils were upsetting local residents."One local resident, Bill Frampton, 63, watched the teenagers being dispersed on Friday night from behind the fence of his house."I don't mind people having fun," he said, "but when it comes to being sick, pissing on my lawn and stealing bits of my fence, it is too much I mean, you wouldn't like it, would you?". Murder squad detectives hunting the killer of 10-year-old Lauren Pilkington-Smith, whose body was found in bushes near her home on Friday, are trying to trace a fugitive wanted over two sex attacks, it emerged yesterday. When you do get here there's so many police, it's like East Germany."His friend James, 18, said: "It is stupid. The locals complain about rubbish on the beach but I bring a bin bag. Daymer beach was a fun, chilled-out place, now it's ruined."Michael Hendry, 18, a local man who was drinking on the beach, said: "The problem is the people who come from up-country. They just don't have any respect for the area."This is a view shared by the local constabulary.
