'Why are you stabbing mummy?' girl cries as mother is knifed 145 times

The terrified child screamed down the phone to emergency services as her mother was killed by her lover, the jury was told.

She was so upset that she dropped the phone before she could speak to an operator, but the line stayed open and the attack was recorded.

The harrowing 13-minute emergency call was played to a jury who heard the girl screaming: "Mummy!" and crying: "Why are you stabbing mummy?"

Christopher Jones, 54, is said to have used six different knives to kill 42-year-old Sharon Blair because the blades kept snapping and buckling during the frenzied attack.

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It is claimed that 80 of the 145 stab wounds were to her face, leaving her mutilated beyond recognition.

Prosecutor Paul Dunkels told the jury at Bristol Crown Court: "Jones slashed her and cut her repeatedly with serrated knives so she suffered mutilating wounds to her face, scalp, torso, arms and hands.

"He left her lying dead on the floor of the kitchen of his house with a knife stuck into her neck all the way to the hilt.

"The implication of the violence and force and determination to continue attacking her can be obtained from the state of the knives when he had finished using them - bent and broken.

"The knives were not very sharp. The mutilation of her face could not have been carried out by a slash, but a sustained attack by the defendant to cut the flesh away from her face."

The victim's daughter witnessed the attack and dialled 999 but dropped the receiver in shock before she had time to speak, the court heard.

Mr Dunkels said: "She said very little, but abandoned the receiver, leaving the line open.

"The sounds of the latter stages of the attack on Sharon Blair could be heard on the phone - her desperate screams, the cries of her daughter and the shouts of the defendant."

After hearing noises at Jones's house in Street, Somerset, neighbour Patricia Horridge rushed outside to see the girl standing in the road in blood- spattered pyjamas.

She was calling to her six-year-old sister through the front window.

Mrs Horridge told the court: "She said, 'My mum's been stabbed and my sister is still in there. You've got to help me get my sister out'. She had blood running down her cheeks, and on her pyjama top and matted into her hair."

Aaron Cribb, who was returning home at the time of the midnight attack in July last year, saw the girl in the street with Mrs Horridge and knocked on the door of Jones's house.

Mr Cribb told the court: "Jones was wearing a shirt and boxer shorts, which were covered in blood.

He spoke calmly and said, "She's dead, you'd better call the police".

"When the police got there, he was saying, "It was me, but it wasn't my fault".'

Mr Cribb helped the six-year-old out of the window and fetched her twin brother, who was in bed upstairs.

The children lived with their mother in Walsall, West Midlands.

PC Teresa Lines found Jones with injuries to the head and elbow.

She said: "He said it was an argument that went wrong.

"He said, 'She attacked me, she stabbed me in the head. We had a bottle of wine, she always gets violent when she's had a drink'."

Police reported that Jones smelled of alcohol, but toxicology reports showed no alcohol or drugs in his girlfriend's body.

Jones denies murder and claims he was acting in selfdefence.

He also claims it was a "crime of passion" and that the couple were shouting "I love you" as they wrestled with the knives.

The trial continues.