A woman has told how she was stabbed in the neck by her partner after an all-night drinking session.
Pauline Wilkes said Andrew Gibson attacked her after she criticised him for drinking alcohol during the day, “sneaking it” and “putting it in juice bottles when there was no need”.
Pauline, 43, said the disagreement was sparked by her finding one of his juice bottles in the living room of her flat in Dunfermline as they prepared to go to bed at 8am.
She said Gibson, who had been in a relationship with her for just over a year, was “being a bit cheeky about it” so she threw the contents of the bottle on top of him.
She told the High Court in Livingston Gibson the accused went into the kitchen.
He returned and stabbed her in the neck, she said.
‘Stabbed in neck’
She told the jury: “He put his arm round me.
“I thought he was giving me a cuddle.
“I didn’t say anything to him and then he’s put the knife in my neck.
“(I felt) nothing really, just a bit of pressure.
“I didn’t realise he’d actually put a knife in my neck.
“He brought it round to the front.
“I don’t know what was going through his head.
“I thought he was going to put it in the front of my neck.
“When he’s put it at my throat I looked at him and said: ‘Are you trying to kill me?’
“I seen the blood spurting.
“I thought I was going to die.”
Blood ‘spurting’ from neck
She said she fled downstairs to escape him but he followed her into the street, still carrying the yellow-handled paring knife.
She said she started banging on a neighbour’s door in a desperate bid to get help but passed out from blood loss and fell to the ground.
She said: “I think he must have been there because I heard him saying to a neighbour: ‘I stabbed her’.”
Neighbour Amanda McKenzie, 44, said she went to Pauline’s aid after a young man burst into her house saying someone had been stabbed.
She said: “Pauline was covered in blood on the ground at her neighbour’s door.
“I actually thought she was dead.
“(Blood was) spurting out of her neck.
“I screamed for help and towels and we tried to stop the bleeding.”
Rushed to hospital
Miss McKenzie said she did not see the accused until he tried to move her away from his partner’s side.
She said: “I argued with him because he wouldn’t allow me to attend to Pauline.
“He was saying that he knew how to do First Aid and that and I was screaming to him to get out of the way because obviously I knew it was him who had just done it.
“I didn’t realise he still had the knife in his hand until he got really, really angry when I told him to get out of my way and he stabbed it into the grass.
“It was a yellow handled blade I’d say maybe four inches.
“It was jaggy on the edges.”
Pauline was rushed to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary as a “code red trauma” used when there is a high risk the patient could bleed to death or die from their injuries.
Professor Michael Gillies, an intensive care consultant said: “There was concern the wound could puncture a lung as well as sever blood vessels in the neck.
“The knife had not punctured any of the great vessels such as the carotid artery or jugular vein for, example.
“If those are cut they can result in fatal bleeding.”
Denies attempted murder
Gibson, 51, from Dunfermline, denies attempted murder.
He is charged with assaulting Miss Wilkes to her severe injury, permanent disfigurement and danger of life at her then-home in Leishman Drive on December 9 2020.
The trial, before Lord Richardson, continues.
