A woman who stabbed her husband in the heart with a kitchen knife has told a court it happened when she “pushed him away” while chopping onions.
Teresa Hanson denies murdering her husband Paul Hanson, who died at the couple’s home in West Cowick, East Yorkshire, three days after Christmas last year.
The 54-year-old told a jury at Hull Crown Court her husband, also 54, had walked up to her as she was preparing their tea, shouting in her face and calling her a “f****** bitch”.
Hanson claimed she turned towards him and pushed him away with both hands, while holding a knife in her right hand.
She told the court she had no idea whether she had made contact with Mr Hanson, until she heard the dog barking and followed a trail of blood to find her husband collapsed on the floor.
Asked by her barrister Jason Pitter KC, Hanson said she did not deliberately stab her husband, did not want to hurt him and “definitely” did not want to kill him.
She told jurors she and Mr Hanson, a construction site engineer, had been together since the age of 16, when they met on a college bus, and had two children.
Hanson, who worked as a hairdresser as well as running a business selling wax melts, said her husband’s behaviour changed when he suffered a brain injury from a punch around 10 years ago.
“He drank a lot before the attack but a lot more after the attack and it affected him more,” she told the court.
The defendant said when she tried to address her husband’s drinking he would “tell me to shut up, call me a bitch”.
He was just shouting in my face and I just turned and pushed him away. I just wanted him to go away— Teresa Hanson
Hanson said there had been no problems between the two over Christmas, and that on the day of Mr Hanson’s death they had been looking at holidays.
She told the court she had drunk around two glasses of red wine, while Mr Hanson had had three or four.
“I did say to him, you’ve had a lot, wait, you’ve not had anything to eat all day. I could tell he’d had enough.
“I was worried he would carry on drinking, not eat tea, just get too drunk and fall asleep.
“I could tell, because, just how he acts. He just gets louder.
“He told me to shut up, called me a bitch, that he didn’t want his tea, told me to throw it in the bin.”
Hanson said her husband went into another room, slamming the door, and she thought he would calm down, but he came back into the kitchen while she was chopping onions.
“He said he told me he didn’t want his f****** tea, to put it in the bin, he was approaching me, calling me a f****** bitch.
“He was just shouting in my face and I just turned and pushed him away. I just wanted him to go away.”
Hanson said she didn’t know if she had made contact with him, telling the court: “It was just quick, it was seconds.
“I wasn’t scared he was going to do anything to me, he was just shouting.
“I saw him walking out of the kitchen, just out of the corner of my eye.”
The defendant said she carried on cooking before going to investigate what the dog was barking at, and saw Mr Hanson lying on the floor.
Hanson told jurors she realised she had stabbed her husband only “when I saw the wound”.
“I was shocked, traumatised, I just didn’t know what had happened. I just couldn’t believe it.”
Hanson sobbed as she told the court she was “devastated” by her husband’s death, and that her “life had gone out”.
The trial continues.
