A murder suspect, who claims he inflicted a fatal wound 10cm deep on his boyfriend when he fell backwards while holding a knife, has been accused of a lying at his trial.

Aaron Ray, who allegedly stabbed Northumbria University student Jason Brockbanks, told jurors he was not aware his lover had been seriously injured.

Newcastle Crown Court heard the kitchen knife, Ray said he used to defend himself, went through a duvet, before causing lethal injury to Mr Brockbanks’ torso.   

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The 21-year-old said he grabbed the knife after his partner attacked him when he was confronted about his infidelity using gay hook up app Grindr.

But prosecutor David Lamb KC suggested he had left the room at Mansion Tyne student accommodation in Newcastle purposefully to get the knife from a drawer in the communal kitchen, where Ray admits putting it as he left.

During cross-examination, Ray repeated his claim he fell backwards as Mr Brockbanks pulled at his waist after being slashed during the attack, contradicting his own claim in police interview he had made a forward downward stabbing motion.

Ray, pressed during a testy exchange with the prosecutor, said: ‘I don’t what else to say,’ to which Mr Lamb retorted: "The truth might be nice.”  

Ray said: “I am telling the truth. I can only say what I can recollect.”

He then conceded he may have been mistaken in what he initially told police.

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Ray admitted having hold of the knife when it went into Mr Brockbanks body, which as forensic experts have testified, was a depth of 10cm.

Asked how that felt, Ray said: “I can’t recall that.”

Mr Lamb said: “Can’t? Or don’t want to?”

Ray said he left because Mr Brockbanks, his 24-year-old boyfriend of three months, told him to ‘get out’ and he was scared, but Mr Lamb said his exit was ‘cold and calculated’.

The altercation between the two men took place in the early hours of Saturday, September 24, last year, and Mr Brockbanks’ body was found in the shower cubicle of his room by a member of staff three days later.

Ray, who said he tried to get in touch with Mr Brockbanks and assumed their relationship was over, claims he did not know he had been mortally wounded.

But the prosecution claim messages sent to friends once a taxi took him home to Sunderland suggest he knew what he had done.

When asked if he was ‘ok’ by friends Ray said messages such as ‘Cannot say on here’ and ‘I am in trouble’ were because he had woken up his parents.

Ray said he did not know the Mr Brockbanks, from Whitehaven, Cumbria, had died until he was told by detectives at the police station.

He told jurors he was ‘heartbroken’, but Mr Lamb suggested the lack of surprise or reaction to police turning up to arrest him at his parents’ home Sunderland days later meant he knew they would be coming for him and why.

The day before his arrest an examination of his devices found Ray, who has told the court he was alcohol dependent, found he had Googled: ‘Can schizophrenics be murderers?’

Ray said: “If you go further back in my search history there are loads of similar searches, day, weeks and months before that.

“I was being told by people that I was schizophrenic because of things I was seeing. I was doing my own research. I did not understand what I was suffering from. I understand it now to be psychosis through the alcohol.”

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Mr Lamb asked: “Is it your evidence that it is just a coincidence then?

“It is just a coincidence that just over 12 hours before the police knock on your door, you are googling: ‘Can schizophrenics be murderers?’

“And they arrest you, quelle surprise, on suspicion of that offence?     

Ray replied: “Yes, it is.”

He denies murder and the trial continues.