Murder defendant's cutting remark as account is labelled 'nonsense' in court

07 March 2024 , 10:29

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Forensic officers at the scene of the alleged murder (Image: Liverpool Echo)

A man accused of murdering his cousin asked the prosecuting barrister "was you there?" after being told that his account was "nonsense".

Matthew Horton died aged 32 after being stabbed three times outside the block of flats in Litherland, Merseyside, where his former partner Chelsea Shaw lived, with Liam Thomas, from Crosby, on trial at Liverpool Crown Court charged with his murder.

The 26-year-old defendant was cross-examined on Wednesday by prosecutor Nick Johnson KC who began his questioning by asking: "Mr Thomas, why did you stab your cousin in his back?"

Thomas replied: "I didn't intend to. I went down to speak to him. I got passed the knife, I was getting attacked. I was scared for my own wellbeing, my own safety." Later in his cross-examination, Mr Johnson said of Thomas' account that Ms Shaw - whom he had been dating for around seven weeks - had passed him the knife: "This is nonsense. She wasn't even there."

He replied: "That’s totally not true, how can you say she wasn't there though? Was you there?" Mr Johnson commented that "six eyewitnesses were". He then continued: "The truth is that you ran out to him into the middle of that car park area, that's where you attacked him."

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Matthew Horton died from stab wounds (Liverpool echo)

Thomas said: "That's totally untrue Mr Johnson." The prosecuting barrister added: "You barged out of that door. You went straight over to him with a knife," reported the Liverpool Echo.

Thomas responded: "No." Mr Johnson: "That’s where it happened." Thomas said: "No, it's not." Mr Johnson continued: "He was trying to get away from you, wasn't he?" Thomas replied: "He wasn't trying to get away from me at all. He was attacking me. He was off his head on coke mate. He was trying to attack me."

Mr Johnson concluded his questioning by saying: "The truth of this is, as Chelsea's new man, you wanted to rescue her from someone you called a f***ing rat." Thomas said: "He was my cousin, we’d had a fight. He was a rat for taking £80 out of her flat."

Mr Johnson told a jury of five men and seven women during the prosecution's opening last week that Mr Horton had been left "angered" after Ms Shaw had "taken up" with the defendant following their breakup, which he was said to have been "not coping at all well" with. He attended her address on Sefton View at around 11.30pm on September 5 last year and repeatedly threw a bottle of water at her window, before Thomas emerged from inside and reportedly confronted him in the car park armed with a large kitchen knife in his right hand.

The two men were said to have grappled with one another before Mr Horton was stabbed in the back, shoulder and thigh - with one of the blows having punctured his lung. Thomas subsequently claimed that Ms Shaw had taken the weapon from her apartment and handed it to him after he had been struck in the head with an extendable baton and that his love rival had "stabbed himself with the knife", although he later told detectives that he had been injured after he had "come forward onto the knife".

Mr Johnson said: "When a man called Matthew Horton went outside his ex-girlfriend’s flat late one night, angry that she had rejected him and moved on, her new boyfriend, this defendant, responded by going outside with a large kitchen knife and stabbing him three times, to death. The defendant said he would fight him if he came round.

"With a knife in hand, he threatened to stab him, then thrust the knife rapidly, forcefully and intentionally into him - causing 19, 15 and 10cm deep wounds into his back, his shoulder and his thigh, passing through his lung, his windpipe and rib bone. The defendant’s immediate reaction was to claim that Matthew Horton had stabbed himself with the knife.

"The defendant claimed to the police that Mr Horton had hit him on the head with a cosh, and that his girlfriend, Chelsea Shaw, then gave him the knife that she had brought from that flat, not him, and that, rather than a stabbing motion, he had just waved it about not intending any harm, and that Mr Horton had just come forward onto the knife. The prosecution say that all the evidence you will hear will clearly show that he was not acting in self defence, that he was in fact the aggressor, going way beyond what was reasonable, and that he murdered him that night." The trial, before Judge Brian Cummings KC, continues.

Adam Everett