A 16-year-old girl goes on trial at the Old Bailey today accused of murdering a fellow teenage girl with a steel Afro-comb.

The defendant, who cannot be named because she is under 18, denies murdering Julie Sheriff in Battersea on May 7 last year.

Miss Sheriff, also 16, was stabbed in the head with the spiked comb, also known as a pin or tail comb.

She was in a coma for four months before dying on September 21 from the brain injury she suffered in the attack.

The defendant was 15 at the time of the incident, which took place near William Hill bookmakers in Falcon Road.

She has been held at Medway Secure Unit, which specialises in housing young offenders, since her arrest.

Miss Sheriff was living with her family in Hackney in east London and had been visiting friends in the Battersea area. The Sheriff family moved to Britain in 2006 from Sierra Leone, West Africa - where Julie's father Raouf was a policeman - to find a better life.

This morning the judge, Recorder Valios, took the rare step of asking members of the court including barristers and the clerk to remove their wigs for the duration of the trial.

This step is only taken in cases where the defendant is under 18-years-old.

The jury for the trial was selected this morning and the case is expected to open at 2pm.

The trial is expected to last up to three weeks.