A domestic violence victim who stabbed a stranger to death when claiming to be acting out of fear has been jailed for seven years and seven months.
NSW Supreme Court Justice Helen Wilson said Lily Ridgeway had been "hypersensitive" to any threat after having suffered shocking domestic violence from two previous partners when she stabbed Jason Adams once in the heart.
Justice Wilson said psychiatric reports revealed Ridgeway, who was savagely bashed by her boyfriend just a month before the killing, had been significantly affected at the time of Mr Adams' death by her own traumatic background and feelings of being unsafe and vulnerable.
"While this was an entirely needless killing, the offender's act was a culmination of long years of trauma, violence and abuse," the judge told the court in Newcastle on Friday.
"Even though on the objective and reliable evidence, Mr Adams posed no real threat to her, Ms Ridgeway was primed to see danger around her because her life had been so often lived in dangerous circumstances.
"Her perceptions could have only been further distorted by the drugs she had been abusing over the previous days.
"Her response to which she described as blacking out or going into survival mode must have been an almost instinctive one."
Justice Wilson, when jailing Ridgeway for seven years and seven months with a non-parole period of five years, accepted the psychiatric opinion that Ridgeway had been in an "emotionally dysregulated state" before the stabbing.
Ridgeway had been suffering from an acute stress disorder and was hypersensitive to any threat.
She had told police she had gone into "survival mode" when she stabbed Mr Adams outside the home of her friend, Nikita Hanson, in Raymond Terrace on February 29, 2020.
Mr Adams, 27, had been bailed to live at Ms Hanson's address but was asked to leave and later sent Ms Hanson text messages threatening to return and smash up the house.
When he did turn up at 5.20am, Ridgeway said she went outside armed with a knife.
Ridgeway said she blacked out after the stabbing and had no memory of what happened but claimed it must have been self-defence or an accident.
In a letter of apology to the victim's family, Ridgeway said: "I am so sorry for what happened that night as it all really affects me knowing I am responsible for the loss of someone's life.
"It is something that will always affect me and will never sit right with me.
"A major contributor to that night and how it played out was that I wasn't myself mentally, emotionally or spiritually.
"I had a lot of recent trauma that impacted my drug issues and I think I was trying to numb myself and escape reality.
"I feel sick with sadness about what happened that night as it's not the woman I ever set out to be and a situation I never thought I would see myself in."
Ridgeway was found not guilty in June 2021 of murdering Mr Adams but the jury could not agree on the lesser charge of manslaughter. A second trial was held earlier this year and Ridgeway was found guilty of manslaughter.
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