The mum of a woman who was allegedly strangled to death by her boyfriend has told a murder trial that she "didn't think he'd kill her".
Liam Cain is currently facing a jury at Liverpool Crown Court accused of murdering his girlfriend Courtney Boorne. She died aged 20 on December 23 last year after being found unresponsive at their flat on Quarry Green Heights in Kirkby.
Her mum Cheryl Boorne was called to give evidence on Tuesday afternoon. She told the court that the couple had been living at the apartment for around a year, and that they had stayed together at her address for "roughly two-and-a-half to three years" prior to this.
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The mum-of-seven described how her daughter had been employed as a support worker with care agency Quartz Care at the time while picking up shifts at 30 James Street Hotel in Liverpool city centre, where 19-year-old Cain also worked, and attending college. Courtney had previously worked at a hairdressers in Ormskirk.
But the witness reported from the witness box: "Courtney wanted different things, she really didn't want to be in a relationship with Liam no more. She told me that a couple of months before, but she repeated it more than once."
Cheryl meanwhile stated that Cain "became more jealous, cocky, more argumentative". She recalled how Courtney had phoned her landline at around around 3.40pm on December 23 last year, saying: "She sounded slightly distressed.
"She said Liam Cain was threatening to take her phone off her. She had to be in work for 5pm and he had tried to strangle her, and if I didn't hear from her by 4 o'clock to phone the police.
"I could hear Liam in the background. I couldn't pick out what he was saying.
"Courtney could be a bit dramatic. I presumed she'd gone to work."
Cheryl was then alerted to the ultimately fatal incident by Cain's mum at around 5pm, after which she went to the flat and subsequently attended hospital. Under cross-examination by defence counsel Andrew Radcliffe KC, she was asked whether anything made her "sense there was anything seriously wrong" during the phone call earlier in the afternoon.
But she said: "I didn't think there would be anything seriously wrong. I knew Courtney did not want to be in a relationship with Liam any more.
"I didn't think he'd kill her. I didn't think he'd be capable of hurting her.
"I didn't think it was as serious as it was. I did believe there was an argument going on, I did believe they were having an issue."
Mr Radcliffe suggested that Courtney would "go into a real rage" and be "difficult to reason with", "screaming and shouting". But Cheryl said: "Most of the time it was because Liam would go into her personal stuff. He would go into her mobile phone without permission."
She alleged that Cain would even "open her eyeballs" while her daughter slept in order to unlock her phone via facial recognition. Gasps were heard among her family in the public gallery as Mr Radcliffe countered: "I'm going to suggest you're making that up."
Cheryl replied: "I'm not making that up."
The defence silk added that Courtney would "go off at the deep end, erupt like a volcano, shouting, swearing, then almost as suddenly calm down again, from one extreme to the other." The witness responded: "She had a temper, just like everybody else.
"That was in the past. That was not then."
Mr Radcliffe also suggested that Courtney would "regularly" threaten to leave his client. The mum said of this: "It's a shame she didn't leave him in the nick of time, isn't it?"
Cain's counsel continued: "That is the sort of thing she would say in her anger, and then she would just calm down again."
Cheryl replied: "She would before she grew up. She had a temper, but she grew up and started becoming more of a woman - she knew what she wanted, and it was not Liam Cain."
A statement from Molly Fitzpatrick was also read to the jury during the second day of the trial. She is the partner of Ms Boorne's brother Daniel, and said: "We used to hang around together on the same estate in Litherland.
"Courtney was a bubbly girl. She always held her own.
"I knew Liam from primary school. Liam was a typical boy, but I didn't like him and we didn't get on.
"She had to change her passwords due to Liam constantly checking her phone. At times, Liam would tell her to change her clothes as they were too revealing.
"She told me on a number of occasions that she wanted to leave Liam. If she was out with her mates, Liam would turn up out of the blue.
"On December 21 or 22, Courtney came round to her mum's address at around 3pm. She came upstairs to Daniel's bedroom and had a chat with Daniel and I.
"Courtney seemed happy and was talking about Christmas. Before she left, she told Daniel and I she was going to leave Liam."
Ms Fitzpatrick reported that Ms Boorne was "sick to death of him" as he was not letting her "have her own life and do her own things". Her statement added: "Courtney has made comments about this previously, but I could see in her face she was serious."
Gordon Cole KC told the jury of four men and eight women during the prosecution's opening on Monday that Ms Boorne had phoned her mum Cheryl at around 3.30pm on December 23 2022. In this call, she told her mother "if she didn't hear from her within an hour to call the police, because something was going on".
Around an hour later, a neighbour rang 999 reporting that she could see a woman in an apartment opposite "screaming and climbing onto the window ledge". Mr Cole added: "She said that the female appeared to be shouting at someone inside the flat.
"Courtney Boorne was heard to shout 'please'. She was crying and she was shouting, 'he has all the doors locked and he won't let me out'."
A 16-year-old witness also called the police to "report a female shouting out of the window, screaming, shouting 'call the police, he's choking me'." Mr Cole said: "She was described by as screaming, and the window was then closed.
"What they couldn't see, of course, was what was going on inside the flat. The only two people inside the flat were Courtney Boorne and this defendant."
Officers then attended the 14th-storey property "very quickly" and had to force entry upon their arrival shortly before 5pm. They discovered Ms Boorne unconscious on a bed in the bedroom with "visible marks to her neck".
She was rushed to Aintree Hospital, but was pronounced dead at 7.02pm. A post-mortem investigation later found that she had suffered a cardiac arrest "because of the asphyxia, the strangulation, the smothering of her by this defendant".
Cain was arrested after being found "crouched down, leaning on an armchair in the living room" with "scratch marks" on his head and face. The 19-year-old had sent a text to his dad saying: "I love you the world, everyone.
"I'm so sorry. Tell everyone."
Cain denies murder, maintaining that he acted in "reasonable self-defence". The trial continues.
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