A MURDERER'S 999 call was ignored by police for an hour and a half because an emergency operator mistakenly dismissed him as a drunken crank, a jury was told yesterday.

Schoolteacher Lesley Grant was stabbed to death by her boyfriend, who then tried to kill himself, Teesside Crown Court heard.

The 43-year-old, from Loftus, east Cleveland, died on November 24 last year.

Jeremy Richardson, prosecuting, said Miss Grant, who worked at Whinney Banks Junior School, Middlesbrough, had been killed by her partner of four years, Simon Keogh, 40. Mr Keogh denies murder.

Mr Richardson said that after the stabbing, the unemployed logistics officer "mutilated" himself before turning a gas canister on in the home they had shared since 1998 at Cemetery Lodge in Whitby Road, Loftus.

He said an emergency 999 call had been made to the police at 7.41pm and a man, who the prosecutor claimed was Mr Keogh, said to the police operator: "She's killed me" and "I'm cut up deep", but very little else.

The operator reported that they thought they heard the caller being sick, and thought the person making the "very odd call" was probably drunk.

Because of this, the call was given "very low priority" and officers did not arrive at the scene until about an hour and a half later.

Mr Richardson described the "horrendous" scene which greeted them.

In the kitchen they found what they at first thought were two blood-soaked bodies.

A trail of blood lay around other parts of the two-bedroom detached house and the telephone receiver, off the hook, was also covered in blood, the prosecutor said.

The officers found Miss Grant on her back with a kitchen knife sticking out of her chest and partially covered by a duvet.

Also in the kitchen, Mr Richardson said, was Mr Keogh. He had serious injuries, including a wound to his neck, and was covered in blood. It was when the officers, smelling gas, turned off a gas cylinder that had been left in the kitchen, and when PC James White went to open the kitchen door, that Mr Keogh moved.

PC White told the jury that he accompanied Mr Keogh to hospital and while in the ambulance he repeatedly said: "She was trying to kill me." Mr Richardson said the couple's relationship had been at a "very low ebb", with Mr Keogh unable to find work and relying on Miss Grant financially, although their relationship was effectively over. The trial continues