A father who claims his 14-year-old daughter died after he accidentally threw a knife at her during a kitchen “play-fight” told police he “must be the unluckiest man in the world”, a court heard.
Simon Vickers, 50, denies both the murder and the manslaughter of his daughter Scarlett, in the kitchen of their home in Darlington, Co Durham, on July 5 last year.
Teesside Crown Court heard Scarlett died after being stabbed through the heart, with prosecutors saying the 11cm wound was too deep to have been caused accidentally.
On Friday jurors heard a video-recorded police interview with Simon Vickers, after he was arrested on suspicion of murder.
He told officers they had been playfighting and he must have picked a knife up when he threw some tongs at her.
Vickers said Scarlett’s mother, Sarah Hall, was cooking tea, and he and Scarlett were sitting on either side of a breakfast bar.
He told officers: “She had some grapes. We started throwing grapes at each other and some splattered on the wall.
“Then I went to try and get her and she tried to push me away. I grabbed the tongs and threw them at her. That’s it, that’s all it was.
“She just shouted ‘ah, ah ah’ and fell to the floor.”
Vickers described trying to help Scarlett, but said that: “Her lips were going bluer and she wasn’t listening when I was shouting at her.
“Sarah took over and the ambulance came and, f****** hell.”
Asked to describe the incident again, Vickers told officers: “I went to try and get closer to her and she moved away.
“I grabbed the tongs and just chucked them at her, obviously I picked a knife up.
“That was it. We were horse-playing.
“I must be the unluckiest man in the world.”
He said he had not seen the knife at the time.
Describing Scarlett as “the love of my life”, Vickers said: “I don’t want to be alive, I really don’t. I just want to curl up and cry, I can’t even cry properly.”
Jurors have heard Vickers told a paramedic who arrived at the scene that his daughter had lunged towards him during a bout of play-fighting and that they were “intoxicated”, drinking wine after a “nice day” watching football.
Asked in the police interview if he was responsible for his daughter’s death, Vickers replied: “I must be.”
Opening the case to jurors earlier in the week, prosecutor Mark McKone KC said the prosecution case was that this was not an accident.
On Thursday Home Office forensic pathologist Dr Jennifer Bolton told the trial Scarlett had died from a single 11cm wound to the left of her chest, which went through her lung and into her heart, causing fatal blood loss.
Dr Bolton said it was her opinion that the knife was being “held tightly” at the time, so that when it came into contact with Scarlett, it went into her.
Defence barrister Nicholas Lumley KC said Scarlett was the much-loved only child of her parents and that Vickers “had no desire to harm her in any way at all”.
The trial continues.
