A WOMAN accused of stabbing a friend to death has admitted using a knife to protect herself after she was pulled from her bed by her hair and kicked in the face.
Keegan Barnes said Toni Butler was ‘off her face’ and ‘looked possessed’ when she launched a violent attack on her in the early hours of the morning.
The 28-year-old is accused of murdering her friend following a drink and drug fuelled party in June last year.
Barnes told Teesside Crown Court how Miss Butler was ‘angry’ that she had been left behind and was ‘making no sense’ as she rambled on.
Describing what happened in the bedroom of her home on Vulcan Way, Thornaby, the defendant said she was terrified as Miss Butler continued to punch and kick while she was on the floor.
Defence barrister Michelle Colburn asked Barnes what happened next.
She replied: “I was on my back. I could see Toni’s foot on my chest. I saw the knife on the floor. She was mentioning that we left her and that someone was ignoring her - she wasn’t making sense.
“I hit her in the back of the leg with the knife twice.”
Miss Colburn asked Barnes how she felt at the moment, she replied: “I was scared. I knew she was stronger than me. She was kicking and punching me. I just wanted to get up.”
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Barnes denied deliberately wanting to hurt Miss Butler and said that she didn’t believe that her injuries would prove to be fatal.
Asked why she hadn’t called an ambulance, the defendant said Miss Butler had told her not as she was on bail and shouldn’t have been in the area of Vulcan Way.
Miss Colburn also asked her client about the efforts to clean blood from inside the house.
Barnes said: “I was cleaning blood off the walls, Toni was helping me.”
During her evidence, the defendant told jurors that she had not slept for three days after taking a cocktail of drugs in the days leading up to the alleged murder.
She admitted that she had taken cannabis and cocaine as well as mix of prescription drugs in the days and hours leading up to the fatal confrontation.
Snapchat footage shown to the jury showed a group of friends partying on a grassed area outside the defendant’s home before they moved to Miss Butler’s flat to continue drinking and taking drugs.
Another piece of footage taken by Miss Butler in the early hours of the morning, jurors could hear her saying ‘Where am I? Where am I going? Where the f*** is Keegan?’.
This was a couple of hours before Miss Butler attacked the defendant in her own bed, the court heard.
Earlier in the trial, footage from a police officer’s body-worn camera showed Barnes being arrested after the emergency services were called at lunchtime on June 10.
Barnes could be heard saying, ‘She self-harms. She smashed a bowl over her head. I tried to lay her on my bed but she’s heavy, you know what I mean?’.
A pathologist told jurors how Miss Butler had died of catastrophic blood loss after suffering two stab wounds to her calf – one piercing a main vein.
Barnes, of Vulcan Way, Thornaby, has pleaded not guilty to murder. The 28-year-old maintains that she acted in self-defence after Miss Butler attacked her.
The trial continues.
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