A model accused her boyfriend of stabbing her to death with the last words she spoke, a jury was told yesterday.

Amy Leigh Barnes, 19, dialled 999 seconds after Ricardo Morrison, 21, had attacked her with a kitchen knife because she had told him she wanted him out of her life, it was claimed at Manchester Crown Court. She was able to whisper: “I’m dying. He stabbed me to death. Please help me.” When the emergency operator asked her who had done it, she allegedly replied: “My boyfriend.”

A short while later Miss Barnes’s father found her slumped in a pool of blood in the hallway of her grandmother’s house in Farnworth, Bolton. She died in hospital of multiple stab wounds.

When Stuart Driver, QC, for the prosecution, was describing how her killer slashed her face from her lip across her cheek and how he plunged the blade deep into her chest and back, penetrating her liver, the defendant stood up in the dock and dashed from the court. The trial was held up for half an hour before the football coach was able to compose himself and take his seat.

Mr Morrison, who denies murder, shared the dock with his mother Melda Wilks, 49, a serving police constable with the West Midlands Police. She denies assisting an offender by washing his clothes to destroy forensic science evidence.

Mr Driver told the jury that Mr Morrison had been going out with the aspiring model and actress for almost a year. He had moved from Birmingham to live with her, initially at her mother’s home and later in her grandmother’s spare bedroom. They had been there for three months before the relationship soured.

The prosecution suggested that Mr Morrison punched her, sprayed aerosol in her face and hurt her arm in a door before locking her in and leaving the house. Analysis of her mobile phone suggests that she sent texts telling him that their relationship was over and accusing him of being a “woman beater”. She then contacted Vodafone to ask them to cut off the phone that Mr Morrison was using.

“This must have been frustrating for Ricardo Morrison,” Mr Driver said.

Miss Barnes rang her mother, Karen Killiner, to tell her what had happened and agreed that her father would pick up her grandmother’s key and come to the house to free her. The time of their last call was 11.33am. The attack happened very soon after that, the prosecution said, because just two minutes later she was dialling the emergency services.

Mr Driver said: “The prosecution say that, having got off the bus, Ricardo Morrison walked the short distance to the house and let himself in, attacked her with the knife and left her for dead. Amy made that 999 call and, after a short time, she was unable to speak any more, but the phone remained on, lying on the floor next to her. Soon her father opened the front door and found his daughter at the bottom of the stairs with a pool of blood beneath her.”

The barrister said that Mrs Wilks knew that her son was accused of a serious offence and that police would want to talk to him when she responded to his call to pick him up at the coach station in Birmingham.

The trial continues today.

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