Alleged killer claims man tried to break into Tadcaster flat

Taylor Fenwick, 22, alleged he had a kitchen knife in his hand as he struggled with Luke Miller, 23, immediately outside his home.

But, he told a jury, he didn’t realise that Mr Miller had been injured until after the older man collapsed and he saw blood on the knife.

“Did you kill him?” junior defence barrister Sarah Barlow asked him.

“I did not, no,” he replied.

Fenwick, of Rosemary Court, off Commercial Street, Tadcaster, denies murdering Mr Miller early on Boxing Day.

Giving evidence for the second day at Leeds Crown Court, Fenwick alleged that Mr Miller, who had expected to sleep at Fenwick’s flat, had had to be ordered out of the flat before dawn.

Outside, Mr Miller shouted a claim about Fenwick to the flat windows. Fenwick denied that the claim had made him angry.

He alleged that Mr Miller had come to the front door of his first-floor flat and Fenwick had opened it.

“He immediately tried to push past me into my flat,” alleged Fenwick.

He claimed he had pushed Mr Miller back, Mr Miller had pushed back and the two had gradually gone down a flight of external stairs until Fenwick was about five or six steps from the bottom.

“I decided to push him as hard as I could”, he said, alleging that Mr Miller had then gone to the bottom.

The flight of stairs leading to Taylor Fenwick's flat (Image: Google Street View)

Mr Miller, after a moment “composing” himself, had chased Fenwick back up the stairs and into the building.

Fenwick alleged he had been scared and had fetched a kitchen knife from his kitchen.

“It is the worst decision I have ever made in my life,” he told the jury. “I had never done it previously, I am not sure why I decided to do it on that occasion.”

He alleged he held the knife with the blade pointing straight up because that was “how you would naturally hold a knife” and claimed that Mr Miller came at him and grabbed him.

Fenwick grabbed Mr Miller’s collar with the knife still in his hand and the two had struggled out of the flat and down the stairs again.

He alleged he felt a “resistance” on the knife, but Mr Miller showed no reaction and grabbed Fenwick in a headlock as they left the stairs.

Both men had their hands on the knife.

Fenwick alleged he was panicking and only focusing on the knife until Mr Miller fell over. He then left the scene for eight or nine seconds.

“I was trying to get the knife away from the scene,” he alleged. “At that point I wasn’t aware of the extent of Luke’s injuries.”

He claimed he went back into the flat and “placed” the knife on the floor of a hallway. As he did so, he saw the blood on it.

“I then knew someone had been hurt," he claimed. "I knew I wasn’t me so I could only assume it had been Luke.”

He alleged he had believed that the kitchen knife had caused the wound and when he was later told it had been done by a hunting knife he felt a weight had been lifted off his shoulder.

The trial continues.