A dad accused of murdering his teenage daughter has said her death was an accident as a result of play-fighting when he threw a knife at her, a court has heard.
14-year-old Scarlett Vickers died from catastrophic blood loss after the blade penetrated 11cm deep into her chest and pierced her heart. Simon Vickers told police he was the “unluckiest man in the world” after the tragedy at the family home in Darlington, Durham, on July 5, 2024.
Prosecutors claim Vickers must have stabbed his daughter “deliberately with the knife”. Denying murder and manslaughter, he protested the pair were simply “mucking around” at the time of the incident.
In a recorded police interview, played to the jury at Teesside Crown Court, Vickers told officers he believed he had thrown a pair of kitchen tongs at Scarlett, after the pair were throwing grapes at each other. He said: “We were horse-playing. I must be the unluckiest man in the world.”
He said the incident had taken place in the kitchen, while his partner, Scarlett’s mother Sarah Hall, was making dinner.
He continued: “Sarah was cooking tea. We have a breakfast table the other side. Scarlett was sat on one side, I was sat on the other. She had grapes and we started throwing grapes at each other. A few splattered on the wall. Then I went to try to get her and she pushed me away and I threw the tongs at her.”
He added: “F***ing hell. I can’t believe this has happened. We were just mucking about in the kitchen. I can’t believe how this has happened.”
The court also heard that Vickers had smoked cannabis and shared two bottles of wine with Sarah in the hours before Scarlett’s death, the Mirror reports.
He insisted he had a “good family life” and a positive relationship with his only child, with the three said to be looking forward to a holiday in Spain six weeks later.
The prosecution allege the teenager’s stab wound was “too deep” to have resulted from an accident, and the knife must have been firmly in Vickers’ hand. A Home Office pathologist told the jury it was “practically impossible” for a thrown knife to cause such a fatal wound.
Vickers told detectives he had not realised it was a knife he had thrown. He said: “I picked up tongs 100%. I just saw the tongs and picked them up. Virtually in a split second I went to sit down. All of a sudden there was a noise ‘argh’ and then we saw the blood.
“There was like a second or two, and then we saw the colour come through her clothes and that’s when we panicked like mad. We started shouting ‘ring 999‘. I started to ring 999 but I couldn’t work the f**ing phone at all for some reason, so Sarah rang it. While she was trying to get though, I was shouting ‘Scarlett, Scarlett.
“Her lips were going bluer and bluer and there was no response. She was there but she wasn’t there. I was shouting at her, trying to get her to wake up.” Vickers denied telling paramedics at the scene that he picked up a knife and that it “just went in” after Scarlett “lunged towards me”.
He added: “There is no way in the world I would stab my child. I threw those tongs at her. I want to die myself. My only child – I don’t know what to say. I can’t even cry. I don’t even know what’s wrong. We were having a good night, a good day, there was nothing untoward. My world has just gone to s*** basically.”
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Jurors previously heard he appeared to be “heavily intoxicated” to a police officer who attended the family’s house in Geneva Road just after 10.50pm.
In a 999 call made by Sarah Hall, she told an emergency operator: “We were messing about, having a fun-fight. My partner threw something and he didn’t realise.”
Opening the case, Mark McKone, KC, told jurors: “The knife must have been held firmly in the defendant’s hand at the time of the stabbing, with the defendant having a firm wrist and a firm elbow.
“The knife must have been firmly in the defendant’s hand to cause that wound, which was 11cm deep. The wound is too deep to have been caused accidentally.”
In defence, Nicholas Lumley, KC, said Vickers “had no desire to harm” Scarlett. He said: “They had been messing around together in the kitchen, in a normal playful way, and Simon Vickers suddenly realised that Scarlett had been injured.
“Her body must have come into contact with a sharp knife and she quickly died as a result of a single knife wound. Simon Vickers will bear moral responsibility for his daughter’s death for the rest of his life.”
Vickers is set to give evidence on Monday. The trial continues.
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