A 20-year-old Co Armagh man accused of the murder of Constable Stephen Carroll allegedly tried to collect information on another policeman for dissident republicans, his Belfast Crown Court trial has heard.

John Paul Wootton, of Collindale in Lurgan, along with 40-year-old former Sinn Fein councillor Brendan McConville, of Glenholme Avenue, Craigavon, denies the March 2009 murder.

Wootton is also accused of attempting to collect or record information useful to terrorists in the months before the shooting.

Constable Carroll was the first PSNI officer to be murdered when he was shot dead after terrorists lured police to the Lismore Manor estate in Craigavon on March 9, 2009.

Yesterday, videotaped interviews of two witnesses, identified only as ‘B' and ‘E', were played to the court in which they claimed Wootton tried to establish the address of a girl whose father was a serving police officer.

In the first of the police interviews, Witness E said Wootton had asked him straight out if he was going with a girl, whose father was a policeman.

He then allegedly asked for her address, which Witness E refused to divulge, telling him that |the man didn't deserve to be shot because he was a policeman, to which Wootton allegedly replied: “A cop is a cop.”

Witness B, too, claimed Wootton had asked him if he knew of the girl's address.

The trial continues.