An alleged victim of domestic abuse “waited until he was sleeping” before stabbing her abusive partner in the chest and abdomen, a jury has heard.
The Coleraine Crown Court jury also heard that in the aftermath of Julie Ann McIlwaine stabbing James Crossley on March 2 2022, the 33-year-old told police “he’s torturing me, I have had enough”.
Prosecuting KC Richard Weir told the jury that when McIlwaine was told her 38-year-old partner had died in hospital, she declared “please God no” and was physically sick.
McIlwaine, from Hazel Close in the Lagmore area of west Belfast, is charged with the murder of James Joseph Crossley.
The victim sustained fatal stab wounds at McIlwaine’s former home in Filbert Drive and formally opening the Crown case on Thursday, Mr Weir told the jury there was broad agreement about the facts of the case but they would have to decide whether the defendant had suffered a loss of control.
The senior barrister described how it was defendant herself who made a 999 call at 23:47, telling the operator that she had “locked herself in the downstairs bathroom with her baby and that she had stabbed her boyfriend at least six times”.
The call handler advised her to seek help from a neighbour and Mr Weir told the jury they would hear evidence that McIlwaine was banging and “screaming” at her neighbour’s door and when they opened it, they saw she was “covered in blood” and she told them “I’ve stabbed him”.
The 999 operator told the neighbour to go next door and when he did, he saw Mr Crossley “lying on the floor, on all fours and he described how there was blood all over him”.
McIlwaine told her neighbours “he’s torturing me, I have had enough, I waited until he was sleeping and then I stabbed him”.
“Mr Crossley had sustained a number of stab wounds and had lost as great deal of blood,” the senior barrister told the court, adding that despite the “best efforts” of police and paramedics at the scene and emergency doctors at the RVH, the victim was pronounced dead at 00:48.
A post mortem examination found that the cause of death was seven stab wounds to his chest and abdomen and the wounds were consistent with a knife found in the bedroom, which matched similar knives in a block of knives in the kitchen.
McIlwaine spoke to police at the scene and she told them how the couple had reconciled the previous January but since that time, Mr Crossley had allegedly been abusive to her and was “making her choose between her family and him”.
She told police “it was like premeditated…I knew what I was doing…I couldn’t take it any more…he is a horrible person”.
During later interviews with detectives McIlwaine claimed her dead partner had been subjecting her to “mental torture,” had threatened to reveal the rekindling of the relationship to her family and that “she would not see her children again”.
While the defence case is that the killing resulted from a loss of control, Mr Weir submitted that “we say when you have heard all of the evidence in this case, you will be satisfied to the requisite standard that she murdered James Crossley”.
The trial continues.