Attack victim Niedel Swan told a jury yesterday that another youth - not the defendant - had confessed to assaulting him with a baseball bat.

Rashad David George Cooper denies doing grievous bodily harm to Mr. Swan by hitting him on the head with the baseball bat outside Hamilton Parish Workman's Club on April 10 last year.

Mr. Swan admitted yesterday to Cooper's lawyer Craig Attridge that he knew a man called David Smith, who looked similar to the defendant, and he had talked to him after the attack.

When Mr. Attridge asked Mr. Swan if it was true that Mr. Smith admitted attacking him with the baseball bat, he replied: "Yes, somewhat."

Mr. Swan, who was 18 at the time of the attack, also said that when he met Cooper, 20, of Fentons Drive, Pembroke, at a session at Bailey's Bay Cricket Club about two months after the attack the defendant denied attacking him.

Mr. Swan, of Crawl, Hamilton Parish, told the jury: "He (Cooper) approached me and asked how I was doing, and said he didn't hit me."

He also said he could not recall making a statement to Police about the attack - in which his jaw and cheekbone were broken - two months after the incident.

Crown counsel Graveney Bannister asked Mr. Swan if he was reluctant to give evidence, to which he replied: "I am giving evidence now."

In a written statement, Kimwana Lataura Hassell, 21, said she was in Hamilton on the night of the attack when she lent her bike to David Smith.

He returned 50 minutes later running and out of breath, saying he had to leave the bike at the the club.

Mr. Smith had told her there had been some guys fighting at the club. She said Mr. Smith was wearing a white jacket.

Several witnesses have identified a man with a white jacket as the attacker or as someone who was at the scene with a baseball bat.

Menelik Ismail Isaac described seeing Mr. Swan hit on the head outside the club.

He said the attacker was wearing a white jacket and he walked up to Mr. Swan, who was sitting on a wall outside the club, and hit him on the head with the baseball bat. When he was on the ground, the assailant tried to hit him several more times.

Jene-Anne Bean, who is now the secretary of the club, said she spoke to a young man wearing a white jacket shortly before the attack who was agitated.

The youth with the white jacket, who was with another man, kicked over a bike outside the club and there was a brief scuffle before he fled the scene.

A short time later, he returned and tried to get into the club but could not get in. Less than a minute later, she said, someone asked her to call 911 as Mr. Swan had been attacked with a baseball bat.

The jury will be absent today for legal arguments and the trial before Assistant Justice Archibald Warner is scheduled to continue tomorrow.