Murder trial jury hears last words of man stabbed at Peterlee house party (From The Northern Echo)

Murder trial jury hears last words of man stabbed at Peterlee house party

8:00am Tuesday 21st February 2012 in Peterlee News By Gavin Havery, Reporter (Derwentside & Tyneside)

A WOMAN whose boyfriend bled to death in her arms yesterday told a jury how he kissed her and told her he loved her moments before he died.

Jade Blackburn said she cradled Cole Wilson and as he lay fatally injured after an alleged knife attack by her brother, John Blackburn.

Mr Wilson, 20, died in a pool of blood in the front room of a house in Sledmere Close, Peterlee, east Durham, where Mr Blackburn’s former girlfriend, Kim McGuire, lived with their one-year-old daughter.

A jury at Newcastle Crown Court, where Mr Blackburn, 20, is on trial for murder, heard that the four friends, from Walker, Newcastle, had been drinking before a row broke out between Miss Blackburn and Mr Wilson in the early hours of September 18.

The jury was told that before that fatal attack, Mr Blackburn had armed himself with a kitchen knife and told Miss McGuire he would stab him.

Miss Blackburn, 21, said she was in the front room arguing with her boyfriend when her brother came in.

She said: “We were proper shouting at each other. Cole came towards me and John said, ‘You are not going to hit my sister’.

“I saw John go to punch Cole.”

Miss Blackburn said she went to get Miss McGuire to stop the men fighting before returning to the living room.

She said: “Cole held his hand to his head and said, ‘I’ve been stabbed’ and I was trying to look where the blood was coming from and screaming, ‘What have you done?’.”

The court was told that Mr Wilson stood and crossed the room before collapsing to his knees while Miss Blackburn used a tea towel to stem the blood.

Miss Blackburn said: “I held his head to my chest and cuddled him.

“He looked at me straight in the face and said ‘I love you’ and gave me a kiss.”

Mr Blackburn denies murder.

The trial continues.