'This can't be the way that I die': Grace Millane accused murderer 'suffocated other woman during sex'

The man accused of murdering British backpacker Grace Millane in New Zealand tried to suffocate another woman weeks earlier, a witness alleged at his trial on Monday.

The accused, who cannot be named for legal reasons, claims that Ms Millane's death - which was caused by strangulation - was accidental.

Two women testified in court that the 27-year-old New Zealand man had choked them on dates in November last year, shortly before Ms Millane disappeared on Dec. 1.

Her body was found on Dec. 9 in a shallow grave. 

One woman, who cannot be named, said she was in bed with the suspect during a date when he suddenly changed position and pinned her so she could not breathe.

“He had grabbed my forearms and put all the pressure on my arms so I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t move my arms. I started kicking, trying to indicate I couldn’t breathe. I was kicking violently. He would have felt me fighting,” she told the court, in tears. “I was terrified.”

She said she pretended to pass out in the hope he would get off her.

He remained in place but she managed to turn her head and breathe.

She testified that she thought “this can’t be the way I die” during the ordeal, and that he later acted as though nothing untoward had happened, saying “You don’t think I did that deliberately?”

The accused messaged the woman on Dec. 2, after Ms Millane’s death, trying to secure another date with her while simultaneously googling “Waitakere Ranges”, where Ms Millane’s body was later found.

Another woman, whose name also cannot be published, told the court that during a Tinder date with the accused nine days before he met Ms Millane, he had consensually choked her.

Ms Millane, a marketing graduate from Essex, had travelled in South America before arriving in New Zealand on Nov. 30 2018.

The suspect met Ms Millane, then 21, on Tinder and CCTV footage shows the pair entering his apartment on the night of Dec. 1, the last time she was seen alive.

Her parents David and Gillian are attending the trial, which is expected to end in early December.