A married man allegedly stabbed his former lover to death with a kitchen knife at the barber’s where she worked days after he was arrested for harassing her and released on bail, a court has heard.
Stuart Thomas, 49, the accused, had been freed on condition that he could not contact Katrina O’Hara, 44, but he waited until the last customer of the day had left the shop and stabbed her twice in the chest, a jury was told.
The prosecution submitted that the pair had begun a romantic relationship in May 2015 after communicating on Facebook but Thomas, a father of four, became “manipulative and controlling”.
O’Hara, a mother of three, had tried to end the relationship as she did not want to have an affair with a married man and friends said she became fearful of Thomas, the jury was told.
He continued to send messages to O’Hara saying they should be together and began threatening to kill himself if she did not take him back.
Thomas was arrested for harassment on 30 December 2015 and a week later he allegedly lay in wait for O’Hara at the back of Jock’s Barbers in the quiet Dorset town of Blandford Forum.
Winchester crown court heard that after Thomas stabbed O’Hara, he ran away and attempted to cut his own wrist with the same knife before police found him.
Thomas denies murder, arguing O’Hara stabbed herself in a confrontation between them.
Nigel Lickley QC, prosecuting, said O’Hara was attacked after the last customer of the day had left. He said: “After she had gone outside to smoke a cigarette, she met the defendant. He was lying in wait for her. He had walked from his home, and he had taken a large kitchen knife with him.
“She struggled with him in the nearby car park. People heard screaming and heard her telling him to get off. He confronted her and chased her back inside the building and stabbed her to death.”
Lickley added: “Those closest to her say in the last few weeks of her life she had become very anxious and fearful of her former boyfriend.”
He said Thomas, a self-employed builder, had twice entered O’Hara’s home after the relationship ended. In one incident, she woke to find him at the foot of her bed having got in through an unsecure window.
Jurors heard O’Hara became so fearful of Thomas’s “obsessive behaviour” that she asked for a restraining order.
The trial continues.
