A teenager was arrested today on suspicion of the murder of British schoolgirl Lauren Pilkington-Smith, police said.
A police spokesman
The 18-year-old man was arrested by Greater Manchester Police at 8am in Leigh.
Lauren (10) was reported missing at 8.20pm last Thursday and her body was found six hours later by her grandfather in dense undergrowth just 200 yards from her home in Leigh.
A post-mortem examination revealed that she had died from "multiple blows to the head".
Superintendent Shaun Currie said the attack was "violent, brutal and sickening" and added her killer would have been covered in blood.
But he said there was no evidence to suggest Lauren had been sexually assaulted. Lauren, a pupil at Leigh Church of England Junior School, had been playing cricket with a number of friends in Sanderson Street on Thursday afternoon.
The Manchester United fan regularly called in on the family home on nearby Twist Lane during the game and was last there sometime between 7pm and 7.15pm.
She was last seen alive about an hour later with two boys on Sanderson Street and was reported missing at 10.30pm. Her distraught family joined police in a desperate late night search and her grandfather, Barry Smith, spotted her body hidden in bushes at 2.30am on Friday at the end of Sanderson Street, just 200 yards from her home.
A police spokesman said: "Detectives investigating the murder of Lauren Pilkington-Smith have arrested an 18-year-old man on suspicion of murder. "He was taken to Pendleton police station where he will be questioned by detectives today."
PA