A WOMAN has admitted fatally stabbing her friend twice in the leg but denied meaning to cause serious harm when they fought in her bedroom.
Keegan Barnes is accused of murdering Toni Butler after a drink and drug fuelled ‘bender’ descended into violence.
The 28-year-old denied leaving Miss Butler to bleed to death as she headed to the shop to buy crisps and search of pornography on her alleged victim’s mobile.
Teesside Crown Court heard how Barnes had been on a three-day drug and booze fuelled bender and hadn’t eaten of slept in the three days leading up to the fatal incident.
Nick Dry, prosecuting, quizzed the defendant about the discrepancies in her evidence and her defence statement during his cross examination of her.
He accuses Barnes of landing three blows on Toni in the bedroom which left it covered in Toni’s blood.
The defendant denied the allegation but accepted that she and Toni went onto the landing from the bedroom during the fight.
The prosecution say that Toni was “fast running out of time - she was bleeding out but that Barnes’s story is that Toni was fine, helping to tidy up and eating Space Raiders, and accessing porn on her phone”.
Mr Dry put it to Barnes that Miss Butler’s mobile phone was found hidden underneath her mattress next to her sex toy. She said she ‘didn’t know’ how the phone had got there.
The jury were shown CCTV footage of Barnes heading to the shop at around 7.30am on June 10 last year to buy more booze using Miss Butler’s bank card but returned with some crisps.
The prosecution’s case is that Miss Butler was already dead at that point but Barnes said: “Toni was alive when I went to sleep.”
The defendant had told the court how Miss Butler had helped her to clean the blood in her house on Vulcan Way and changed her blood-stained clothes herself before sitting down at the bottom of the stairs, where her lifeless body was found.
During her evidence on Friday, Barnes said Miss Butler was ‘off her face’ and ‘looked possessed’ when she launched a violent attack on her in the early hours of the morning.
Earlier in the trial, jurors heard how the 25-year-old had died of catastrophic blood loss after suffering two stab wounds to her calf – one piercing a main vein.
The prosecution said efforts had been made to clean Miss Butler’s body before different clothes were put back on her. The alleged victim’s blood-soaked Dumbo nightie was discovered in a plastic bag in the kitchen of the house.
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.
Defence barrister Michelle Colburn is due to deliver her closing address in the morning before the jury retires to consider its verdict.
The trial continues.
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