Woman on trial in Middlesbrough accused of murdering her father

A woman has gone on trial accused of murdering her “violent and controlling” father following a family row.

Nursery worker Jessica Breeze has denied murder, telling police that she had been trying to protect her mother after her father attacked them.

The 20-year-old is accused of stabbing Colin Brady, 49, in the back at the family home in Middlesbrough in June, when she was 19.

The stabbing occurred following an argument in which he had repeatedly hit his daughter and threatened to kill her and his partner, the jury heard.

Breeze wept in the dock as details of how her father had died from blood loss were revealed in Teesside crown court.

The kitchen knife penetrated his left lung and although paramedics took him to the nearby James Cook University hospital, he could not be saved.

Breeze’s mother, Kelly, said Brady “looked like a zombie” as he walked through to the living room before he collapsed on the sofa and asked his daughter what she had done.

The mother and daughter both rang the emergency services and the defendant told the call handler that her father had been attacking them with a knife, which she took off him.

But her mother’s account varied. She said Brady had been aggressive towards them and had threatened to cut his own throat.

After she was arrested, Breeze told police her father had a history of violence and she had not meant to harm him.

Nick Dry, prosecuting, said: “What happened that night was the culmination of a troubled and volatile relationship between father and daughter, characterised by frequent arguments, not infrequent violence and regular disharmony within the household.

“Colin Brady was a man with a violent past, no-nonsense, controlling and intolerant of departures from the rules of his house, quick-tempered and not slow to use or threaten physical force if crossed.”

The jury heard that an argument broke out while the family were sharing a takeaway, after Breeze’s parents found out she had been secretly seeing her boyfriend when she had said she had been at work.

Brady allegedly hit his daughter several times, and her mother intervened, at which point he also attacked her, shouting: “I swear down on my mother’s life, I am going to kill the pair of you.”

The court heard that Brady then picked up a knife and asked if they wanted him to cut his own throat, before the women fled upstairs.

Shortly after, the jury was told, Brady threatened to smash the family’s cars up, and as he walked to the front door his daughter stabbed him.

In her defence statement, Jessica Breeze said she was “foggy” about what had happened and could not remember getting the knife.

However, Dry urged the jury to look at the evidence dispassionately, saying: “Although it may have been necessary for her to use some force to defend herself or her mother, what she did by plunging a large kitchen knife in the back of her father, as he walked away, coat on, heading for the door having signalled his intention to leave the house, cannot be said to be reasonable, even allowing for the obvious distress at the time.

“Sympathy is not a defence to murder. Criminal trials are not popularity contests.”