Jurors told North End attempted murder accused '˜plunged knife in woman's back'

Opening the case against Dler Mohammed, prosecutor Stephen Parish said the 43-year-old stabbed the woman in the back after retrieving a knife stored nearby.

Mohammed, of no fixed address, is on trial charged with attempted murder over the knife attack on July 9 last year outside Barclays Bank in London Road, North End. He denies the charge.

CCTV played at Portsmouth Crown Court showed the moment Mohammed plunged the kitchen knife into the back of his brother’s partner Diana Pranskuniene.

Mr Parish said the defendant had ‘grabbed’ her in London Road, and said he wanted to speak to her, saying: ‘Why do you hate me? Why are you destroying my life?’

She started to call 999 and Mohammed ran off towards Poundland, just past Laburnum Grove and next to Sainsbury’s, Mr Parish said.

He added: ‘Shortly afterwards – she puts it at a minute – she felt a huge bang in the back, she was still holding the phone.

‘She felt numb and out of breath and she collapsed in a sitting position on the pavement. She didn’t realise that she had been stabbed until she was in the ambulance and there was in fact a knife in her back, embedded up to the hilt.’

Jurors heard Mohammed was seen at 8.58am leaving a drinks bottle behind the delivery gates at Sainsbury’s, before the attack at 3.24pm.

Mr Parish said: ‘The significance of all that of course is that the prosecution says the defendant must have planned the attack well in advance.

‘He’d gone to Sainsbury’s in the morning to hide the knife.’

He added: ‘He waits for Diana near the top of her road. When he encounters her he runs back to retrieve the knife and stabs her.

‘Members of the jury, the crown say that the location of the injury, the depth of the wound, is consistent only with an intention to kill.’

Mr Parish said Mohammed ran across London Road between cars before he was confronted by members of the public in Derby Road.

‘(Darren) Shuker heard someone say “why did you stab her?” and the defendant said “I kill her, I kill her”, something along the lines of “I’m better off without her”,’ Mr Parish said.

Mr Parish said the defendant had initially pretended to be his brother Hiwar Namiq, who was then also arrested.

The defendant told police in Derby Road ‘my brother told me to stab her’ but later said ‘I put the knife in’.

Scans taken of Ms Pranskuniene showing the knife in her back were shown to the jury. She was taken to Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham, where a CT scan showed the knife displaced the sixth and seventh ribs, with the blade tip close to the posterior intercostal artery.

Medics transferred her to Southampton General Hospital where the surgeons removed the knife under general anaesthetic.

Mr Parish said pathologist Dr Basil Purdue said: ‘This knife could perfectly well have punctured the chest cavity or reached a major blood vessel such at the aorta, with serious or catastrophic results.’

Addressing the jury, the prosecutor added: ‘The issue it seems is what was the defendant’s intention.’

(Proceeding)