A teenager accused of raping a 15-year-old girl in a Watford hotel room has had the case against him dropped.

Reece Jones, 19, of Queen’s Road, was accused of getting the girl drunk before taking her back to Travel Lodge, in Exchange Road, in the early hours of Sunday, January 23.

St Albans Crown Court heard that after drinking wine and vodka the victim had sex with three or four unknown men.

The girl, who said she could remember nothing after entering the hotel, woke up to find an unknown black man in bed with her. Mr Jones, who is white, was asleep on a pull-out sofa bed.

CCTV showed three other black men leaving the hotel at 8.23am the morning. None have been traced.

The only person charged was Mr Jones. He denied raping the girl and also contested an alternative charge of conspiracy to rape. When arrested he made no comment.

Today, as the case for the prosecution came to an end, Judge Stephen Gullick ruled there was insufficient evidence for the case to proceed.

There was no evidence, he said, that Jones had sex with the girl and no evidence he had conspired with the others.

In his ruling he said: "Whatever moral judgements may be passed on a person it does not mean a jury can safely conclude the defendant was a member of a criminal conspiracy."

Prosecutor Jan Hayne had explained how the girl had been given money by her mother to go into Watford town centre on 22 January last year to buy a new pair of school trousers.

She next spoke to her mother at 7.30pm in the evening and said she was going to the cinema – a conversation that ended in a row.

Her mother repeatedly tried and failed to contact her. The next morning her niece found a Facebook posting from 2am in which the girl had written: "I am in the park [Garston Park] with my babe."

Later that day the mother got a call from her daughter, who was upset. After a conversation with her mother the police were called and the rape investigation started.