DINNAL: ‘HE TOUCHED UP MY GIRLFRIEND’ CLAIMS KNIFEMAN

Central News, Press Room, Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, LONDON, EC4.
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08 July 2011

touch…1

A jobless man accused of stabbing his neighbour to death in an unprovoked attack claimed today (THURS) the victim had ‘touched up’ his girlfriend.

Trevor Dinnal, 43, said he was heartbroken after learning Malcolm Boxall had tried to steal his partner and decided to confront him.

He ran to the victim’s home in Edmonton, north London, kicked the door and then smashed the front window.

Dinnal told jurors at the Old Bailey that he caused the fatal injury to 43 year-old Mr Boxall’s neck during a struggle on the doorstep.

But he denied using a knife – insisting it was a piece of scrap metal he picked up from outside the house.

‘I ran at him and strike him with the metal in my hand,’ he said. ‘I wish I never had it in my hand.

‘I didn’t have any intention, it just happened.’

His barrister Oliver Blunt QC asked: ‘Did you intend to kill him? Did you intend to cause him serious bodily harm.’

Dinnal replied: ‘No… I suppose I wanted to hurt him.’

He claimed he didn’t see blood spurting from the wound and did not realise the seriousness of the injury.

Dinnal said he had no idea how his thumbprint was found on the handle of a knife found on the front patio.
 
He told the court that he ‘loved’ Mr Boxall and saw him as his best friend.

But in the weeks leading up to the incident the victim had been hanging around more with two other friends, the court heard.

He said that as he and his girlfriend walked back to his home, opposite the victims, she said Mr Boxall had made a pass at her.

‘She said he had been sexually touching her up and asked her to leave me to go with him,’ said Dinnal.

‘He had been placing his hands on her private parts and bum and her breasts. I didn’t want to believe it.

‘She was crying. I was heartbroken. Disappointment, disbelief, different emotions. I loved them both, they were my life.

‘I wanted to go and confront him and ask him why.’

Witnesses have claimed that Dinnal plunged a knife into Mr Boxall’s neck after frogmarching him out of the house.

One described blood pumping out of the wound like ‘someone had turned the tap on.’

Jurors heard Dinnal walked calmly away after telling the victim: ‘You talk too much.’

Dinnal, of [16] Malham Terrace, Dyson’s Road, Edmonton, north London, denies murder.

The trial continues.
ends