A man accused of murder has told of the moment he stabbed his “best friend”.
Aldis Minakovskis, 25, is on trial for the alleged murder of 34-year-old Aigars Upenieks at Dundee’s Thurso Crescent on December 23 2015. He denies the charge.
Minakovskis took to the witness box at the High Court in Aberdeen. He said Mr Upenieks had been his “best friend”.
The pair, along with Mr Upenieks’ wife Jolanta, were at a friend’s flat in Thurso Crescent on December 23 and drank alcohol, the court heard. Mr Upenieks fell asleep at about 3am, so Minakovskis said he and Mrs Upenieks went to find more alcohol, locking the door of the flat. But Mrs Upenieks then received an angry phone call from her husband, who had woken up, and passed it to Minakovskis, the court heard.
Minakovskis said: “He started yelling at me and said, ‘you aren’t my friend any more, you are sleeping with my girlfriend’.”
Minakovskis said this made him “feel bad, because we weren’t sleeping together”.
He said Upenieks then demanded: “Make sure you open this door for me, otherwise I will break it.”
Minakovskis said he made his way round to the flat on his own, where Mr Upenieks confronted him.
He said: “He started pushing me. He was kicking off. He was raging. He was very angry.
“As I had had a drink, I fell on the kitchen floor. He put his knee on my neck and another one of his legs on my left arm. He was yelling at me and I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“I tried to grab whatever I could to make sure I could get away from him.
“At that point it was getting hard to breathe and it was getting dark before my eyes. I thought I was fighting for my life.
“I tried to grab something. It could have been a fork, a knife or a spoon, and I tried to punch him with it.
“He got up and ran outside. Once I felt better — in about 30 seconds — I ran after him to see what was happening.
“I saw him on the second or third step. He was on his knees. He said to me, ‘Aldis, what have you done?’
“Then I saw the blade of this knife was still in his back or his arm. I saw the handle was still in my hand. I threw it away. I was scared and I ran away.”
This article originally appeared on the Evening Telegraph website. For more information, read about our new combined website.