A man accused of murder has told a court he went to check a lottery ticket after finding his former girlfriend dead with her throat slashed.
Michael Lane, 27, said he panicked and that it did not cross his mind to dial 999 after finding 19-year-old Shana Grice’s body slumped against her bed.
He said he did not touch her to check whether she might still be alive at her shared home in the Mile Oak area of Brighton, East Sussex.
Lane told jurors he went into shock and “didn’t know what to do”.
Prosecutors allege Lane slipped into Grice’s home while she was alone and slit her throat before setting fire to her room after she had rekindled a romance with her ex-boyfriend Ashley Cooke.
Lane is said to have refused to accept their breakup and decided that no one else could have a relationship with her. He allegedly told a friend: “She’ll pay for what she’s done.”
At Lewes crown court, in front of a public gallery packed with Grice’s friends and relatives, Lane’s defence counsel, Simon Russell Flint QC, asked him directly if he had murdered her.
Lane, of Portslade, replied: “No.” He denies murder.
After finding Grice’s body, Lane said he went to a McColl’s shop to get a lottery ticket checked. Flint asked him: “Why do that after seeing your former girlfriend slumped against her bed seemingly dead?”
“Because I didn’t want what I saw to be true,” he replied.
Lane said he had come across Grice’s body after deciding to pop round to find out why she had not left for work on 25 August last year.
He told jurors he had found the front door open and went in: “That’s when I saw her slumped against the bed. She wasn’t moving. I saw blood on the bed and blood on the floor.
“She was in her dressing gown. I thought she was dead. I didn’t know what to do.”
Asked why he did not call an ambulance, Lane said: “Because I was just in shock.”
He said he had seen no signs of fire and denied having set the room alight. He said he had bought petrol earlier because he wanted to kill himself after becoming depressed following the death of his grandfather.
Lane said he left Grice’s dwelling and returned home, but did not tell any of his family about his discovery. “I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t want to get the blame for it.”
After showering, he said he went to get his lottery ticket checked, then later noticed blood on his white Lonsdale trainers.
“At this point sirens were going off, so I hid them along the road,” he said. He also got rid of a T-shirt after panicking as the sirens wailed.
When asked by Flint, Lane admitted telling a number of lies in police interviews.
Earlier, jurors heard police had issued Grice with a fixed penalty notice after complaining about an earlier assault by Lane.
Police were called after he allegedly pulled her hair and tried to grab her mobile phone on 24 March last year. No further action was taken against him.
Grice was issued with a fixed penalty notice for failing to disclose she had been in a relationship with Lane, and for “having caused wasteful employment of police by making a false report”.
It was one of a number of contacts Grice had with police before her death, the court was told.
On 9 July, police cautioned Lane and told him to stay away from Grice after he stole a back door key from her home, let himself in and watched her sleeping, the court heard.
The following day, Grice told police she received about seven calls from a withheld number, including one with heavy breathing, which she believed was related to the incident the previous day.
Grice was told that there were no further lines of inquiry and the case would be left on file.
On 12 July, about six weeks before she was killed, Grice told police Lane was following her. Jurors heard that police had treated the incident as low risk, but that the investigating officer would be made aware.
The case continues.
