A Hunter Valley woman has admitted to stabbing a man in a street fight near Newcastle, but her lawyer has told a jury it was in self-defence.<\/p>\n
Jason Adams, 27, was found dead on a road with a stab wound to his chest at Raymond Terrace in the early hours of February 29, 2020.<\/p>\n
Lily Ridgeway, 26, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter in the Supreme Court in Newcastle.<\/p>\n
In her opening address, Ms Ridgeway’s barrister Talitha Hennessy argued the stabbing was an accident, and that her client had acted in self-defence and did not unlawfully kill Mr Adams.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jason Adams was stabbed in a Raymond Terrace street. (Facebook)<\/p>\n
The court heard Mr Adams was killed during a fight outside the home of a friend of Ms Ridgeway, who she had been staying with.<\/p>\n
The jury was told Mr Adams had also been staying with that friend, but when relations soured, he was forced to leave the day before the stabbing.<\/p>\n
Heated messages<\/p>\n
The court heard in the hours before he died, Mr Adams exchanged heated and threatening text messages with Ms Ridgeway’s friend.<\/p>\n
He was stabbed when he returned to the street outside the home, allegedly yelling out threats.<\/p>\n
Ms Hennessy told the court Ms Ridgeway did not deny she was armed or that she used the knife after she was grabbed by Mr Adams.<\/p>\n
“There is no dispute Ms Ridgeway was outside and that she had a knife on her,” she said. \u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lily Ridgeway is on trial before a jury in the Supreme Court. (Facebook)<\/p>\n
“There is also no dispute Mr Adams died from one stab wound to his heart.<\/p>\n
“But there is going to be some disputes about things that happened straight after.”<\/p>\n
Crown prosecutor Carl Young told the jury they needed to consider two key points.<\/p>\n
“Can the Crown prove the stabbing was a deliberate and intended act by Ms Ridgeway as opposed to an accident?” he said.<\/p>\n
“[And] can the Crown prove Ms Ridgeway was not acting in self-defence?”<\/p>\n
‘What happened in that five-minute window?’<\/p>\n
Mr Young said Mr Adams had spent the night prior to his death at a local fast food restaurant, from where he sent 240 text messages to Ms Ridgeway’s friend.<\/p>\n
“They discussed him being kicked out, and returning property and returning money,” Mr Young said.<\/p>\n
The jury heard Mr Adams was in the street at around 5:20am, and that a five-minute time frame after that would be crucial to consider.<\/p>\n
“There was a triple-0 call just just before 5:25am and by that stage Mr Adams was dead or close to death,” Mr Young said.<\/p>\n
“What happened in that five-minute window between the end of the messages and the 000 call?”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said jurors would hear from Ms Ridgeway’s friend, who told police she stayed inside when Ms Ridgeway went outside.<\/p>\n
Mr Young said Ms Ridgeway later described the moment Mr Adams was stabbed.<\/p>\n
“Ms Ridgeway approached and said something like, ‘Oh babe, you should have felt that,'” Mr Young told jurors.<\/p>\n
Defence barrister Talitha Hennessy said no such words were used.<\/p>\n
“The Crown expects [the friend] to say that Lily said something to her when she went back into the house and that is disputed,” she said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court sitting in Newcastle for the trial. (ABC Newcastle: Robert Virtue)<\/p>\n
“It is also disputed Ms Ridgeway went inside and vomited in the toilet.”<\/p>\n
Mr Young told the jury they would be played a police interview in which Ms Ridgeway said “she went into survival mode” and that “if it wasn’t him it would have been me”.<\/p>\n
He said the Crown would argue that it was an unlawful killing and not an accident.<\/p>\n
The trial before Justice Natalie Adams is expected to run for a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Hunter Valley woman has admitted to stabbing a man in a street fight near Newcastle, but her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1300,43,107065,55313,107064,24275,44,74821,35208,27777,107066,1049,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-161818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-death","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-jason-adams","11":"tag-jury","12":"tag-lily-ridgeway","13":"tag-manslaughter","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-not-guilty","16":"tag-self-defence","17":"tag-stabbing","18":"tag-street-fight","19":"tag-supreme-court","20":"tag-top-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topnews","23":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}