A Fife woman claims she was beaten unconscious by her ex-partner and woken two days later with blood on her face and black material tied around her neck.
Angela Connelly told a jury Paul McMullan had “showed up” at her door in Dunfermline’s Carnock Road and let himself in to use the toilet, before she felt a “huge blow” to the back of her head.
The 40-year-old said she next remembered waking up in her kitchen some time later and crawling upstairs to her bedroom, following the alleged attack on Friday January 22 last year.
Miss Connelly said: “I felt absolutely awful. I felt like I had been in a car crash.
“The pain was everywhere. The first blow is the one I remember.”
‘Victim’ found in flat
Dunfermline Sheriff Court heard Miss Connelly was woken by her niece – who was staying just two doors away – and another person, who is too young to be named, on the Sunday after concerns were raised about the house being in darkness all weekend.
She said: “They were inconsolable, they thought I was dead.
“I remember my niece screaming: ‘Auntie Angie, what’s that around your neck?'”
Miss Connelly’s niece, Coady Bell, told the court: “She was quite dazed.
“She thought there was chocolate on her face but it was dry blood. It was everywhere.
“The back of her ear was split and and she had something tied round her neck.
“She had an indentation round her neck.
“It was a black bit of material.
“It was tight and her skin was severely swollen.
“You could not see it (the material) for her skin.”
Miss Bell, 23, said she recalled hearing her aunt and McMullan arguing on the Friday while she was outside having a cigarette.
Photos shown to jury
Both Miss Bell and the other person who went to the house told the court they saw dried blood on the kitchen floor when they entered through the back door.
The younger witness said they could see blood over Miss Connelly’s face and her eye had swollen and purpled.
They said: “She looked battered.
“There was something round her neck but I wasn’t sure what.”
Photographs of the extensive injuries to Miss Connelly’s face were also shown to jurors on Tuesday.
McMullan is accused of striking Miss Connelly on the head and body, causing her to fall to the ground and, by means unknown to the prosecutor, repeatedly striking her on the head and body leaving her unconscious, and tying a piece of material around her neck.
Defence suggestion of alternative scenario
Defence lawyer Alan Davie suggested to Miss Connelly she had seen McMullan, 40, earlier that day and she told him she was pregnant with his child.
Mr Davie put it to her they had been eating a Chinese takeaway meal together and she had been drinking alcohol and taking prescription drugs and they had an argument about whether she was pregnant.
Mr Davie said: “You swung a punch at his face, striking him, then you swung a knife, which you had been eating your Chinese meal with, towards him.
“As you swung the knife he put out his right hand and caught you on the side of the face and you fell… against the radiator in your sitting room.
“You asked him again to stay and he left the house.”
The solicitor suggested the complainer never lost consciousness, that the numerous injuries she sustained were not caused by McMullan and that something else happened in the time between the Friday and Sunday which she did not want to disclose.
Miss Connelly strongly denied this version of events.
The court also heard McMullan had been a best friend of Miss Connelly’s brother and he has been known to her family for many years.
The trial, before Sheriff Susan Duff, continues.
