A drug-fuelled killer who was shot with a Taser gun by police minutes after he stabbed his girlfriend in her Oldham home said, ‘I enjoyed that, you need more volts’, a court heard today.
Officers found Andre Bright, 30, stood up with a ‘fixed, almost vacant gaze’, with his hands in his pockets inside a house as victim Victoria Adams, 22, lay dying near the front door, it was claimed.
He was hit with the 50,000 volt gun amid fears he might still be armed with a knife only to make his remark when warned it would be deployed again if he refused to give himself up.
As he was led away Bright – who was high on cocaine and cannabis – looked directly at a policewoman and smiled as if ‘seeking to intimidate police officers’, the Manchester Crown Court jury was told.
Miss Adams a travel and tourism graduate died two hours later in hospital from stab wounds.
Police discovered the killing occurred whilst the couple’s baby daughter lay upstairs and just 48 hours after she told a friend of fears that he would kill her.
Hours before the murder Bright had stabbed a bouncer in the face with an afro comb when he was refused entry to a nightclub, it was said.
The court heard Miss Adams met Bright when she was just 16 and he was 23 and they began a relationship.
However he would have a number of girlfriends at any one time and already had other children.
Mr Mark Kellet, prosecuting, said they would only meet up late at night and never did things as a couple with Bright using Miss Adams flat in Oldham, Greater Manchester, as a place to go ‘when drunk or high’.
When she took a pregnancy test in January 2013, she sent a text message to Bright telling him that she was expecting his child – but he told her to delete his number and never speak to him again.
The tragedy occurred on December 8 2013 three days after Miss Adams had a bust up with Bright after she went out with friends for the first time since the birth of their daughter in August.
Bright had turned up at her property and began telephoning other girls in front of her and put them on loudspeaker.
When they argued Bright spat in her face, told her he was going to have sex with her friends and threw a bottle at her, said the prosecutor.
“She had run from the house fearing that Andre Bright would kill her,” said Mr Kellet.
She later turned up at a friend’s house crying, wearing a dressing gown and no shoes.
She told Bright’s sister, Michelle Dunkley, that ‘Andre’s conduct had become frightening’ and when he turned up at the flat again she sent a text message to Ms Dunkley, which said: “I don’t wanna stay here but he’s in such a bad way.”
Bright and two other friends later visited another house in the area, buying three bottles of wine on the way, before he returned to Miss Adams flat in a taxi at around 9.35am.
Just half an hour later he phoned the emergency services and said: “Can I have an ambulance please. Someone is dying in front of me. Someone has stabbed her. I don’t know what’s happened. She’s dying.”
When police arrived at the scene Bright was allegedly stood with a ‘fixed, almost vacant gaze’, with his hands in his pockets while Miss Adams lay dying on the floor near the front door.
Fearing he was still holding the knife, he was tasered by a PC. When warned that if he moved it would be deployed again, Bright replied: “I enjoyed that. You need more volts in your taser.”
Mr Kellet said: “A female officer, states that as the defendant was being escorted out of the premises, he looked directly at her and smiled. The Crown say the defendant was doing as he did, seeking to intimidate police officers.
“A paramedic saw Victoria Adams lying in the hallway of the property on her back with her legs facing into the sitting room.
“She was bleeding heavily from the chest and officers were administering first aid. He tried to question her, but she kept asking where the baby was.
“The baby was upstairs, safe, where the officers could take control.”
Post-mortem results show Miss Adams had been stabbed once to the chest, causing a wound 8cm deep, and once to the abdomen which was 12cm deep and had penetrated her kidney.
Bright, also from Oldham, accepts he killed Miss Adams but claims it was a combination of an accident and a ‘psychotic incident’. He denies murder and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
The trial continues.
Story via Cavendish Press.
Image courtesy of David Owsianka for US Air Force, with thanks.
