Murder accused tells of fighting with Sam

Feb 28 2008 by Dan Warburton, The Journal

A SCHOOLGIRL told a murder trial jury she had not realised she had a knife in her hand when she stabbed a young mother to death in a street confrontation.

The 15-year-old said she had never intended to kill or cause Samantha Madgin serious harm and only became aware she must have injured her when she saw blood on her own hands as she fled the scene.

“I feel deeply sorry for what happened,” she told Newcastle Crown Court. “I didn’t mean to cause any of it.”

The teenager, who admitted taking alcohol and drugs on the night of the killing on August 2 last year, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denies murder.

Prosecutors at Newcastle Crown Court claim Samantha, 18, was acting as a peacemaker during a confrontation between two of her male friends and two of the 15-year-old’s male friends in a back lane in Wallsend, North Tyneside.

Giving evidence yesterday, the schoolgirl told the jury that in the hours leading up to the killing, she had drunk six cans of lager, almost three pint glasses of vodka and cola as well as taking cocaine.

She said she had been at a flat in Wallsend when her two friends left to go to a telephone box to order more cocaine, returning in an agitated state.

She claimed the two males left again soon after, saying “there was bother and they were going to sort it out,” and she had heard shouting outside.

She said she decided to take a knife out of the kitchen “because I wanted to frighten them away and sort out the trouble and to protect myself.”

She told the jury she went outside “frightened of what I was going to see” and saw her two friends in the back lane face to face with two other males shouting at each other.

The girl said she approached her friends, touching one on the arm to try to get him to go back, telling him to “just leave it”.

She said she noticed a female she had not initially seen holding a glass bottle in her hand at shoulder height and claimed the female asked her: “Are you with these rajies?”

She alleged the female was waving the bottle around and moved closer.

The 15-year-old said she had been holding the knife with the blade up her arm because she had not wanted to use it and so it could not be seen, but when the female got closer, she had moved the knife out so she could see it.

“We got closer together,” the girl told the jury. “I thought she was going to hit me with the bottle. I showed her the knife in the hope she would move away.”

The girl said the female did not move away and they started fighting, the female pulling her hair, moving her hands about and “pushing me about”.

She said she recalled during the fight “waving my hands about to get her off me,” but claimed she had not been conscious of the fact she had the knife in her hand and did not know at the time she was causing the stab wounds.

Asked how she thought the deep wound to Samantha’s chest had been caused, the girl told the jury: “When I tried to get her away from me, my hands pushed out.

“I can’t remember when that was. It wasn’t right at the beginning and it wasn’t at the very end either.”

She told the jury she had never intended to kill or cause Samantha serious harm and her intention during the fight was “just to get her off me”.

The girl said she ran away in panic, later disposing of the knife.

The trial continues today.