Woman stabbed to death by neighbour 'in revenge for dispute over skateboard noise'

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A charity executive was stabbed to death in the street by her neighbour after he lost a four-year dispute about the noise made by her son’s skateboard, a court has heard.

Trevor Gibbon, 48, allegedly armed himself with two knives and ambushed Alison Morrison, 45, as she walked to the station in Harrow, north-west London, on her way to work on 18 December last year.

He carried out the killing the day after he was handed a restraining order, having pleaded guilty to harassing Mrs Morrison and her family for years, the Old Bailey heard. As she lay dying, Mrs Morrison repeatedly named her attacker, telling residents who had flocked to help: “Trevor Gibbon did this to me.”

The killer had fled in his Mercedes but was picked up later the same morning 100 miles away in Lincolnshire. He still had dried blood on his hands and described himself to police as a “f*****g coward” and said: “It was over a neighbour dispute.”

Opening his murder trial, prosecutor Brian O’Neill QC told jurors: “That morning Trevor Gibbon was a very angry man. He may well have felt that Alison Morrison had gotten the better of him and had won their protracted dispute. He may well have felt the need for revenge as a result.

“And so he armed himself with not one but two knives and drove off to wait for her. He attacked her, intending not merely to cause her really serious injury, but to kill her.

“This was a planned, premeditated attack on an unarmed defenceless woman by an angry man who was out for revenge. This was murder, nothing less.”

The dispute dated back to 2011 when Mrs Morrison, her husband Cedric and their teenage son moved next door to Mr Gibbon. Mrs Morrison worked as a senior manager for consumer charity Which?

Almost immediately, Mr Gibbon complained about the noise from the boy’s skateboard but, despite the Morrisons’ attempts to placate him, nothing seemed to satisfy him, the jury was told. Mr O’Neill said the Morrisons wanted to live in peace with their neighbours but Mr Gibbon seemed to take almost every opportunity to escalate things.

Last year, Mr Gibbon followed the Morrisons and stopped and stared at them in his car in an “eerie prequel” of what was to come. He admitted harassment.

The next morning, CCTV cameras at both homes recorded Mr Gibbon leaving his house just before Mrs Morrison. He then lay in wait before launching a “ferocious” attack, inflicting 33 separate wounds, the court heard.

Gibbon denies murder but has admitted the killing on the basis he was “suffering from an abnormality of mental functioning”. The trial continues.