A murder trial witness told a 999 operator: “There’s a guy stabbing her and she’s just lying there,” a jury has heard.
Mohammed Abboud’s neighbour Chloe Forbes-Kindlen said she went into shock after seeing him crouched down beside a woman who “wasn’t moving.”
Abboud denies murdering his former partner Agnieszka Szefler at his home in Bridge of Earn and has lodged a special defence of self-defence.
Miss Forbes-Kindlen, 24, said told advocate depute Sheena Fraser she was in her bedroom, which overlooks Abboud’s back garden, when she heard three loud screams.
She said: “The third was half, like it was cut off. It sounded like a female.
“I seen the man who lives there coming down the stairs and the girl was on the grass face down gripping the ground.
“I saw the man over her, it was like he restrained her and held her back.
“Then he turned her and then I saw him stab the girl.”
Miss Forbes-Kindlen said the man was holding what looked like a “chef’s knife”, which was “chunky at one side and came to a sharp point.”
She said that she saw the knife come down towards the woman’s torso but did not see it connect because wooden fence slats obscured the view.
Ms Fraser asked: “Did it look like it connected?”
Ms Forbes-Kindlen replied: “I was certain that it had.”
The witness said after the first blow the knife was raised again, at which point she ran to her landing and screamed to her boyfriend to bring her the phone.
The trial was played Miss Forbes-Kindlen’s 999 call where she is heard telling the operator: “I think I just saw somebody getting stabbed.
“I heard screaming and then there’s a guy stabbing her and now she’s just lying there.
“I just saw a knife I’m 99% certain I saw a knife.”
The operator then asked: “Is the female still on the ground?”
Miss Forbes-Kindlen replied: “She’s making noises and he’s in the garden with her.
“He’s lying over her, he’s upset. I seen him with a knife in his hand.
“I saw it going down, I didn’t see it going into her, like he was stabbing her.
“She is screaming, she is going ’ow,ow,ow’.”
After seeing a neighbour approaching the garden, she told the operator: “I can see someone lying and there’s blood.
“I don’t know if she’s dead or not, she’s just lying there like she’s dead.”
Abboud, 57, denies biting Miss Szefler repeatedly on the body, striking her repeatedly on the body with a knife or similar instrument, pursuing and straddling her, and again striking her repeatedly with a knife or similar instrument on January 23 at Horsemill Place, Bridge of Earn.
Abboud is then alleged to have washed blood from the knife used in the crime, removed it from the position it was in and placed it under Miss Szefler’s body to give the appearance she had fallen on it.
It is then alleged that Abboud repeatedly struck himself on the body with a knife to give the appearance that he had been assaulted by Miss Szefler and that he did so to avoid detection, arrest and prosecution and attempted to defeat the ends of justice.
The trial before Lord Uist continues.