London - A woman stabbed her lover through the heart with a steak knife and then ‘sacrificed’ his life by waiting too long to call an ambulance, a court heard.
James Knight, 26, collapsed in the street, took off his bloodstained top and told his partner ‘my heart is bleeding’ after she allegedly attacked him in a drunken row following a night out.
But Emma-Jayne Magson, 23, ‘calmly’ waited 45 minutes after stabbing the father-of-two before dialling 999.
Knight’s last dying breaths were heard on the ‘chilling’ call, in which she said he had collapsed after a night out without mentioning the knife wound she had inflicted. When told an ambulance might be delayed, Magson simply replied: ‘No, that’s fine, don’t worry about it’, the court heard.
She is accused of stabbing Knight on the doorstep of her home in Leicester in the early hours of Sunday, March 27. Michael Evans QC, prosecuting, told the jury she plunged a steak knife 4.5 inches (about 11cm) deep into Knight’s chest in ‘anger’.
As he lay dying in the street, Magson told concerned neighbours who had come to assist, including Knight’s brother Kevin, that he had taken drugs and been fighting with bouncers. She had already taken her boyfriend’s bloodied T-shirt indoors, and downplayed his injuries to such an extent that she stopped one bystander turning over his body to see his fatal wound.
Evans said Magson deceived those who rushed to assist into believing Knight was not seriously injured, saying ‘he’s on coke, he’s on drugs, he doesn’t need help’.
‘Her calmness caused even his own brother to be deceived,’ the prosecutor told Leicester Crown Court. Kevin Knight helped carry his brother into Magson’s home and then left, with no idea he was dying.
Knight, a binman and father to Ruby, four, and Evie, five, died shortly after his girlfriend called 999 after 3am. The court heard Magson then went into the street and started screaming: ‘He’s dead.’
She later told police called to the property that she and her boyfriend had not been out together, and that Knight had turned up at her door alone and collapsed outside.
Evans said: ‘It was only when she realised she had no option that she admits she stabbed him. We say, she’d opened the door to him armed with a kitchen knife and stabbed him through the chest, and after she’d done that she literally sacrificed him.’
The couple had met up earlier in the evening in Leicester city centre and got a taxi to Miss Magson’s home at about 12.30am.
‘As soon as they got into the cab they began arguing,’ Evans said.
The taxi driver eventually asked them to get out. When they left the cab, CCTV cameras captured Knight pushing his girlfriend ‘aggressively’ to the floor.
Magson got up and they continued walking to her house, at one point holding hands.
A neighbour later heard banging on Magson’s door, and her shouting: ‘I’m not letting you in after last time.’ She denies murder, saying she acted in self-defence. The trial continues.
Daily Mail