A WOMAN charged with murder over the stabbing death of Jason Adams at Raymond Terrace last year can be acquitted on any one of three bases, including that the stabbing was accidental, that she did not intend to seriously injure the 27-year-old or that she was acting in self-defence, a jury has been told. Lily Ridgeway, now 22, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Adams and is facing a two-week trial in NSW Supreme Court.
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Ms Ridgeway is accused of stabbing Mr Adams once in the chest, the blade penetrating his heart, during a confrontation outside a house in Payton Street about 5.20am on February 29 last year.
The trial has focused on the "crucial" five-minute window between when Mr Adams, who had been turfed out of the house earlier in the night, returned and when he stumbled down the road, collapsed in the middle of an intersection and died.
During her closing address, Public Defender Madeleine Avenell, SC, told the jury the combination of evidence from the key witness, Ms Ridgeway's friend Nikita Hanson, who said she saw Mr Adams step forward "closer and closer" to Ms Ridgeway until the knife "entered his body", and the expert opinion of a forensic pathologist meant "at a minimum" the jury could not exclude "the reasonable possibility that Mr Adams walked himself onto the knife".
Ms Avenell also said the jury would not be satisfied the prosecution had excluded the possibility that Ms Ridgeway was acting in self-defence.
That comment, he said, would make it clear the stabbing was not an accident or done in self-defence.
But during her evidence Ms Hanson said she didn't hear Ms Ridgeway say anything when she came back inside. During his closing address, Mr Costello said regardless of whether or not the comment was said, Ms Ridgeway's actions after Mr Adams was stabbed, which included fleeing and disposing of the knife, indicated she had not "blacked out" or "gone into survival mode", as Ms Ridgeway had told police.
"It may not have been extensively planned," Mr Costello said of the stabbing. "It probably wasn't planned at all. In hindsight it may have been regretted. But at the moment the knife wound was inflicted it was not an accident. The intention she held at that time was an intention to inflict really serious injury. And the stabbing was not carried out in any form of self-defence." The jury will retire on Friday.
