A former bus driver "flipped" when a schoolgirl threatened to blackmail him if he did not give her any money, a Court heard.

Alan Higgins, 42, offered to give the 13-year-old a lift after seeing her upset at Keighley bus station.

But after they set off in his car, the teenager allegedly asked him if he could give her some money.

In a police interview. Higgins said that when he refused, the girl threatened to tell someone that he had done something to her in his car.

He claimed that she indicated she would cause him some harm in some way by suggesting that he was trying to touch her.

"I remember saying 'Why are you trying to do something like this when I'm trying to help you?'" he claimed.

Higgins added: "At that stage I just flipped. I absolutely lost control of everything.''

The court heard that he did hit the girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, and bit her on the hand in an incident in Halifax Road, Keighley, last January.

He said: "There was never an attempt of any sort to do the girl any serious harm. I did not try to murder her at all."

Higgins, of Oakworth Road, Exley Head, Keighley, has pleaded guilty to kidnapping but not guilty to attempted murder and indecent assault.

The jury at Bradford Crown Court was shown the alleged route which Higgins had taken after he offered the lift to the girl.

The trial continues.

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