A hairdresser stabbed her husband through the heart with a kitchen knife ‘out of anger’ when he started shouting at her as she prepared a post-Christmas meal, a murder trial jury heard today.
Grandmother Teresa Hanson, then 53, had been guzzling red wine and chopping up onions in the kitchen when construction site boss Paul Hanson, 54, interrupted her.
She later told police: ‘He came alongside me and was shouting. I turned with the knife in my hand as he walked towards me.
‘He came straight at me and the knife went into him.’
Minutes later, she called 999 to request an ambulance for the dying man, whom she referred to as ‘the patient’.
Asked by the emergency operator why she stabbed him, she allegedly replied: ‘Just out of anger. We was having a row. I did not mean to… Please come now. He is going unconscious.’
She added ‘there was a lot of blood and she had stabbed him once in the chest with a small kitchen knife five minutes before the call, the jury heard.
The call then disconnected and when she rang back she was connected directly to the police operator who asked her if she needed the police.
The jury heard she replied: ‘I don’t think so’. The operator repeated: ‘You don’t think so?’
Mrs Hanson was allegedly told the operator: ‘We had an argument and I accidentally stabbed him. So if you want to come you can.
‘We had an argument. I was cutting and cooking tea. He told me to ‘f-ck off’. I don’t know what I did.’
In response to further questions, she is said to have replied ‘It is not helping shouting at me’ before adding: ‘He is foaming at the mouth. Please come.’
Hanson later told cops her husband had been abusive towards her for years and got more bad tempered when he had been drinking.
But Hull Crown Court heard that the only statement she had provided about what happened did not suggest his behaviour had anything to do with the stabbing.
She claimed she had the 10.6cm knife in her hand and it went into his heart when he ‘unexpectantly turned towards her’ and walked onto it.
The 2cm wide blade went straight through the thin cotton T-shirt that Mr Hanson was wearing.
It penetrated his rib cage and pierced the tissue sack in which the heart sits, causing ‘catastrophic’ injuries and damaging one of the body’s biggest and most important arteries.
She claimed that she did not even know he had been injured until the dog started barking and she saw the ‘trail of blood’ to where her husband lay.
But prosecutor Alistair MacDonald KC said pathologists believed this was ‘highly unlikely’ and questioned why she didn’t help officers with their investigations.
He said: ‘The penetration of his body by the knife which she was preparing food with, she appears to suggest, was a terrible accident caused by Mr Hanson unexpectedly turning towards her.
‘As a result of which, the knife went right through his heart and into one of the major blood vessels of the body. She does not appear to suggest she attacked him.
‘She appears to suggest she didn’t even realise the knife had penetrated his chest until she saw the trail of blood.
‘[But] shortly after that happened, she made that call to the emergency services.
‘She was quite clear in that call that she had stabbed her husband out of anger after an argument before she had a chance perhaps to think up some other story.’
Hull Crown Court heard the couple had been in their marital home, worth around £250,000, in West Cowick, near Snaith, on the night of the incident last year.
Police later found a pan full of chopped up cooked onions, some pastry she had been rolling out, and a glass of red wine near the sink along with the knife.
Mr Hanson was found lying down at the end of a ‘trail of blood’ leading back to the kitchen area where he had been stabbed, the jury heard.
Nobody else was present in the house and she had drunk two and half glasses of wine during the afternoon, prosecutor Alistair MacDonald said in his opening of the case today.
Mr Hanson had also consumed a ‘moderate’ amount of alcohol but would have been over the legal limit for driving.
Mr MacDonald said paramedics had made ‘heroic’ attempts to revive Mr Hanson by keeping up CPR for nearly three quarters of an hour.
But he was dead on arrival at Hull Royal Infirmary – as Mrs Hanson was in a police car after being arrested on suspicion of causing him GBH.
She allegedly suffered a panic attack in the car and told the escorting officers: ‘I did not mean to do it. It was just an argument. I was making f-cking tea.’
On being told her husband was dead and she was being arrested on suspicion of murder ‘she let out a high-pitched cry’, Mr MacDonald said.
The prosecutor said there were many questions about what had happened because apart from one ‘rudimentary’ prepared statement she gave to the police Hanson had refused to comment further in subsequent interviews.
He also underlined the apparent differences between what she had told the emergency operators and what she later claimed in her prepared statement.
The first prosecution witness, Home Office Pathologist Michael Parsons described the sequence of events given by Mrs Hanson as ‘a highly unlikely scenario’.
It was possible in theory that people can be stabbed by walking onto a knife. ‘But it is an extremely unusual scenario,’ he added.
While the theoretical idea of accident stabbing could not be discounted, he believed it was ‘highly unlikely’ that Mr Hanson walked onto a weakly held blade and was stabbed.
He underlined there was also the question of the height difference. Mrs Hanson was 5ft one inches. Husband was 5ft six inches.
Hanson, now 54, denies murder. The trial continues.
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