Murder trial mother sobs

A mother of three sobbed in the witness box as she described the last minutes of Telford man Barry Evans as he bled to death on her living room floor.

Wendy Walters, 43, told the court that she saw Mr Evans stab himself in the shoulder in her flat. And she repeatedly insisted that she had had no reason to hurt him and had never stabbed him.

Walters, of Bembridge, Brookside, Telford, was giving evidence on the fifth day of her trial at Birmingham Crown Court.

She denies murdering Mr Evans, 45, of Hurleybrook Way, Leegomery, on July 7 last year.

The prosecution claims she stabbed him eight times, three times in the back. It is claimed they had a violent row while both drunk after she returned from shopping.

Walters phoned 999 but paramedics were unable to save Mr Evans.

Walters said she had three daughters, but one had died in 2003. In the middle of 2007, she said she was taking heroin and methadone on prescription but had come off drugs while on remand in prison.

She said Mr Evans had moved in to her flat in Bembridge in March last year. On July 7 she said police had brought a former boyfriend Roy Lacey to her flat after a dispute with his partner. She and the two men had been drinking heavily but she left with Mr Lacey to go shopping after the men had a row.

Walters, whose husband was in prison, said she met a man called Shaun Johnston in Telford and had sex with him before going home.

She said she went into the living room to show Mr Evans her new phone.

"Barry was sitting on the end of the settee with a knife in his hand and I could see spots of blood on the floor," she said in tears. "He stabbed himself in the shoulder. He stood up and knocked my phone out of my hand against the wall, breaking it. I tried to pull the knife out of his hand but I could not and he put it in his shoulder."

She said she later found him lying on his stomach. "I thought he had collapsed through drink," she said. After seeing the blood she went to a phone box to call the police.

The trial continues.