'I didn't want him to die, I just wanted him to stop,' woman accused of murdering abusive father tells jury
'He was trying to kill my mum, so what was I supposed to do,' says 20-year-old nursery worker
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A 20-year-old woman accused of murdering her abusive father while he drunkenly attacked her wept as she told a jury: “I didn’t want him to die, I just wanted him to stop.”
Jessica Breeze, 20, told Teesside Crown Court she does not recall stabbing her father Colin Brady, 49, at their family home in Middlesbrough last June during an argument in which she said he threatened to kill her and her mother.
The nursery worker, who denies all charges, said she was on the brink of alerting the police about what he was doing that night when he demanded she hand over her phone.
She said her father had flown into a fit of rage, punching her and her mother before strangling her on her bed as she tried to escape out the window.
Ms Breeze plunged the largest kitchen knife in the house through his back, the prosecution said, penetrating his left lung to a depth of 18cm.
Mr Brady was taken to James Cook University Hospital shortly after but he could not be saved.
The prosecution suggested Breeze's initial account to the police was "pure fiction" and a "massive lie".
Breeze, who maintains she acted in self-defence, said she does not recall what happened entirely.
Simon Russell Flint QC, defending, asked her: “Were you intending to kill your father?”
She replied: “No, I didn’t want him to die."
She added: “He was still my dad, I still love him.
“I didn’t want him to die, I just wanted him to stop.”
The jury heard Mr Brady had previous convictions for violent offences including grievous bodily harm with intent.
His previous domestic violence attack on Kelly Breeze, the defendant’s mother, was the worst the police constable who attended the incident had seen in his career, jurors were told.
A post mortem toxicology analysis put him at three times the drink drive limit at the time of the attack, the court heard.
The defendant told the court the row began over a family member while the family were eating takeaway food together.
She said her mother tried to intervene.
A passing chef could see a man attacking someone in a chair, and could hear women's screams from the house, and he was so shocked he got his sister to call police.
There was something different about him that night, Breeze told the court, adding: "He kept saying he was going to kill us, if he killed us he wouldn't care."
She explained how both the front and back garden doors were locked, leaving the upstairs bedroom window as her only means of escape, but her father stopped her and started to strangle her on the bed.
"I can remember not being able to breathe," she said.
The nursery worker last recalls her father threatening to kill both her and her mother before apologising to him on the sofa after the stabbing.
Through tears she told the jury: "I was saying I was sorry, but I didn't know what to do."
She called 999 from a neighbour's house after the stabbing.
Upon hearing the news of her father’s death Breeze reportedly said: “I didn’t mean to do it; I would kill myself if I did.
“He was trying to kill my mum, so what was I supposed to do.”
The trial continues.
Additional reporting by Press Association