Jury retires to consider verdicts in Christmas Day stabbing murder trial
Kirsty Carless, 33, is accused of plunging a knife into 31-year-old Louis Price's heart in the early hours of December 25 2024 in an attack 'motivated by anger and jealousy, and fuelled by cocaine and alcohol' after a friend sent her a picture of his Tinder profile, Stafford Crown Court heard.
Prosecutors allege Carless, of Haling Way in Cannock, Staffordshire, took a kitchen knife in a taxi from her home to Mr Price's parents' address in Elm Road, Norton Canes, where she expected to find him with a woman.
CCTV showed Carless running up the front path into the house and then 'stalking' him around the garden before he was later found with a single stab wound to the chest on the conservatory floor.
The court was told Carless had called Mr Price 45 times between 2.15am and 2.44am while she waited for the taxi to take her to his address and called the cab company two more times during that time to find out where it was.
She is said to have asked the taxi driver to wait outside while she went in the property to stab Mr Price at around 3am, before fleeing minutes later in the cab to her parents' address, where she was arrested.
Father-of-six Mr Price had been considered by police to be 'at very high risk of domestic abuse' and Carless was on police bail at the time of the fatal stabbing after allegedly strangling Mr Price on November 11 2024.
In her evidence to the trial, Carless said she had no recollection of stabbing him, was 'not a violent person' and had only gone to Mr Price's address as she believed he had taken money from inside a card she had in her home.
She said she picked up a knife with intent to destroy the caravan he was staying in in his parents' back garden and had 'panicked' after Mr Price was stabbed and fled.
She denies murder and possession of an offensive weapon in a public place in relation to the fatal stabbing, and intentional strangling and assault occasioning actual bodily harm in relation to the incident in November.
The jury were sent out to start their deliberations by judge Mr Justice Choudhury at 11.41am on Monday.
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Kirsty Carless, 33, plunged a knife into 31-year-old father-of-six Louis Price's heart in the early hours of December 25 2024, in an attack 'motivated by anger and jealousy, and fuelled by cocaine and alcohol' after a friend sent her a picture of his dating profile, a trial at Stafford Crown Court heard. Sentencing her on Thursday in front of a packed public gallery, Judge Mr Justice Choudhury said Carless, of Haling Way in Cannock, Staffordshire, had 'destroyed the life of a young man and his family' when she fatally attacked him at his parents' home in Elm Road, Norton Canes. On Wednesday, after around a day of deliberation, a jury of seven men and five women found her guilty of murder and possession of an offensive weapon by unanimous verdicts in relation to the fatal stabbing. 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