IN the midst of a bitter love triangle and paternity battle, Daniel Pettersson told his ex-partner that if he ever found Kevin Smith at her house at Jesmond then "it was on".
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Mr Smith, 39, also known as "Squids", had made threats of his own, including threatening to kill Mr Pettersson, their rivalry fuelled by animosity about the overlap of their relationship with the woman and confusion surrounding who was the father of her young child.
And so on January 6 last year, when Mr Pettersson discovered Mr Smith at the house those threats became a reality and their bitter feud reached a chaotic conclusion.
After a day spent desperately trying to contact the woman in the hopes of seeing his son, Mr Pettersson pulled up outside the house in Michael Street. It was 3.19pm.
By 3.39pm he had been stabbed in the chest and was fighting for his life.
There was no dispute that it was Mr Smith who stabbed him.
But he pleaded not guilty to murder on the basis of self-defence, claiming he had been forced to defend himself after Mr Pettersson burst into the home and the pair wrestled over a hunting knife in the kitchen.
And so in the context of what was a months-long feud, Mr Smith's brief murder trial focused on just those crucial few minutes between when Mr Pettersson arrived at the house and when he collapsed outside.
There were really only two witnesses and ultimately the jury were presented with two competing versions of what happened on the afternoon of January 6.
On one version, Mr Pettersson was the aggressor and showed up to the house "agitated" and "increasingly desperate" to see his ex-partner after calling her 17 times in four hours.
He had stopped outside the house in Michael Street about 15 minutes before the confrontation and witnessed something inside that made him leave, pick up his flatmate and immediately return.
On the journey back to the house he asked his mate for a lighter to hold in his hand in case Squids was there and he had to punch something.
When he arrived he called out to his ex, said he wanted to see his son and refused to leave. And when he spotted an armed Mr Smith inside the home he challenged him to come outside and fight.
And, crucially, when Mr Smith put down the knife and began to "retreat' into the home, Mr Pettersson, a large man, forced his way into the home and went after Mr Smith, the pair wrestling through the home and into the kitchen before Mr Pettersson was stabbed.
On the other version, Mr Pettersson showed up at the house to see his ex and their son, not to fight with Mr Smith.
Mr Pettersson was unarmed and when he saw Mr Smith inside with the knife he tried to get the weapon off him because an aggressive Mr Smith was stabbing at him with his young son nearby.
"It is the Crown case that Kevin Smith stabbed Daniel Pettersson in the kitchen and at the time he did so he had the intention to kill or cause really serious injury," Crown prosecutor Brendan Queenan said during his closing address. "He was not acting in self-defence. He did not believe that what he did was necessary to defend himself. Indeed the opposite was true; he was the aggressor."
That question of whether what Mr Smith did was necessary is a crucial issue in any self-defence case.
The jury were told Mr Smith should be acquitted of murder on the basis of self-defence if they found that he believed stabbing Mr Pettersson was necessary to defend himself and what he did was a reasonable response in the circumstances.
But after deliberating for more than a day, the jury found what Mr Smith had done in stabbing Mr Pettersson, an unarmed man, was not necessary or reasonable in the circumstances and, therefore, he was not acting in self-defence.
At 3.50pm, when those in court assumed they were coming back just to send the jury home for the day, they were greeted instead with a verdict; guilty of murder.
Mr Smith will be sentenced in December.
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