A man fatally stabbed his partner and then triggered a gas explosion at their north-east London home last summer, a court has heard.<\/p>\n
Clifton George, 45, is accused of murdering 46-year-old Annabel Rook during an argument at their home in Stoke Newington on 17 June 2025. George has pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denies murder.<\/p>\n
Opening the case on Wednesday, William Emlyn Jones KC, prosecuting, said the stabbing happened during an argument between the couple. \u201cIn the course of that argument he punched her, he then tried to strangle her, and then he went to the kitchen to get a knife, he came back with the knife and he stabbed her to death,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was undoubtedly very angry with her, and we will be looking at why he was so angry. He lost his temper, and in his rage \u2026 he murdered Annabel.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court heard Rook was stabbed at least 22 times, including through the heart, before the explosion. Emlyn Jones said Rook\u2019s body was discovered after the explosion, while George \u201cwas found in the back garden, bleeding heavily and trying to stab himself with a shard of broken glass\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a police interview, George said he had \u201clost it\u201d when he found out Rook had \u201clied to me\u201d.<\/p>\n
Emlyn Jones told jurors: \u201cI can tell you at the outset that the defendant does not deny that he stabbed his partner to death. He admits that he killed her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Court sketch of Clifton George (left) appearing at Snaresbrook crown court in June 2025. Photograph: Elizabeth Cook\/PA<\/p>\n
The court heard that the couple were not married but had been living together for just over a decade.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said George\u2019s guilty plea to manslaughter had not been accepted and that he continued to be accused of murder. He said jurors would have to determine the reason for the fatal stabbing, including an assessment of their relationship, which he said had been \u201cdifficult at times\u201d.<\/p>\n
Regarding the explosion, Emlyn Jones said George opened the valve of a propane gas canister, of the type used for camping and barbecues, in the basement to \u201ctry and blow the place up\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said a fire investigator worked out after the blast that George \u201chad tried to flick the circuit breaker switches in the basement on and off, but if this was an attempt to cause a spark to ignite the gas, it didn\u2019t work\u201d.<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cHe had left all the gas rings on and lit on the hob \u2013 but that also had not been what ignited the gas hissing out of the canister in the basement. In the end, the defendant had simply started a fire in the basement \u2026 it was that fire which then caused the gas from the canister to explode.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe force of the blast lifted the floorboards, shifted the furniture and caused significant damage to the property and to the house next door. It also made an almighty bang.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rhys Sullivan, the couple\u2019s next-door neighbour, recalled a \u201cmassive boom, which felt like a mini-earthquake\u201d, and rushed outside with his partner, Harriet Cosby, to check what had happened.<\/p>\n
Cosby found George lying on the kitchen floor covered in blood and broken glass, while the roof of the kitchen extension had been blown off. The court heard that the neighbours shouted for George to get out of the house, but watched in horror as he then started to stab himself in the neck.<\/p>\n
Rook, the daughter of a retired Old Bailey judge, Peter Rook, was a co-founder of a London-based social enterprise called MamaSuze, which supports refugee and migrant women with art and drama activities and workshops.<\/p>\n
The trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man fatally stabbed his partner and then triggered a gas explosion at their north-east London home last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-569595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}