The woman accused of murdering her boyfriend in the heart after a drinking binge said it was a tragic accident.
Emma Walsh, 31, took to the witness box at Liverpool Crown Court today (Monday) as the defence began its case. She has denied the murder of her boyfriend Gary Morgan, 36, after stabbing him in the chest at her dad's home on Lavan Close in Everton. The couple had spent around six hours in the pub watching football on the television before returning to the bungalow, where the violence unfolded.
During her cross-examination by Richard Pratt KC, defending, Walsh admitted both she and Mr Morgan had drunk a large quantity of alcohol and had also taken cocaine during the course of the day.
READ MORE : Man stabbed girlfriend's dead body after attacking her in her home
Walsh, who snuffled into a paper tissue throughout her evidence, said that Mr Morgan had become angry after Walsh had run into an old male friend at the pub where they had been drinking, and her phone had started "pinging" after they returned home.
She said: "He followed me into the kitchen and started shouting. He pushed at me, so I pushed him back. He put his hands round my throat and began lifting me off the floor. I thought I was going to die. I stabbed him once with the knife. I just wanted him to get off and stop.
"I didn't want to kill him or cause him serious harm, I loved him."
Walsh said she called an ambulance when Mr Morgan began turning purple and blue in the face. She admitted she lied to both the operator when she told them Mr Morgan had come by his injuries following "an argument in town", and then to police when she said he'd been "in collision with a speaker."
She told Mr Pratt: "I was scared, petrified of what I'd done."
Earlier in her evidence, Walsh said she had been fostered at various times and was the mum of two boys, who had been adopted. She has a series of previous convictions, including battery, racially aggravated assault on a man in a barber shop, and assault of an emergency worker.
She said her relationship with Mr Morgan had been "okay" at first, but problems began when they began drinking together, when they became argumentative.
She said: "He was paranoid. Sometimes I'd be jealous, and at others he would think that of me. These arguments became physical after a few months. The drink and cocaine would be the occasion of fighting between us."
Before Walsh took to the stand, the prosecution concluded its case by calling two former partners of Walsh to give evidence. One, Ayton Courtney-Stephens, said he'd been in a relationship with Walsh through a mutual drugs habit and she had stayed at his home in Bidston, Wirral, on a number of occasions.
He told John Benson KC, prosecuting, that he was "in a bad place" at the time of his association with Walsh. One morning she began "storming around the house", which culminated in her stabbing him in the arm with a kitchen knife.
Mr Courtney-Stephens said: "Out of the blue she went from 0 to 100. She smashed me on the head with an iPhone while she was talking to her dad. I was trying to calm her down and she just got worse and worse. She ran straight into the kitchen, took a knife out of the draw and cornered me in the kitchen.
"I went into defensive mode and the knife went into my left wrist, cutting an artery. The kitchen was covered in blood."
Questioned by Mr Pratt, he denied he had been violent towards Walsh.
Another witness, Barry Squires, said he had also been in a relationship with Walsh and she had moved into the house he shared with his three grown-up children. He too said the couple argued violently and she had once pulled a knife on him. She was also jealous and accused him of being unfaithful.
Mr Squires denied Mr Pratt's suggestion that Mr Squires had been the one who was "controlling and violent."
The hearing before Judge Andrew Menary KC continues.
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