A man accused of murdering a trucking-company boss in Adelaide's north has told a jury he was acting in self-defence, striking the victim with a two-kilogram spanner, alleging the victim had first hit him with the same weapon.
Jesse Ray Penhall, 40, is on trial in the South Australian Supreme Court charged with murdering David Norris.
Mr Norris, 39, was found dead in a pool of his blood at his Salisbury trucking business in September 2017.
The court heard the two men were friends and had been talking amicably before things took a turn for the worse.
On Monday, Mr Penhall took the stand to tell the jury Mr Norris invited him to look at a truck he had been working on inside the shed before Mr Norris suddenly came at him with a weapon.
"I hear, 'You should f***in' be dead already', I've turned and just caught a glancing as he's gone straight for my head with that spanner," Mr Penhall told the court.
"I've managed to turn and that's when it struck me on the back.
"We became involved in a wrestle to try and gain possession of that spanner so that he couldn't kill me with it or hurt me."
Mr Penhall said he hit Mr Norris with the 60-centimetre spanner which "made him angrier".
"I'm trapped in a spot with no escape," he said.
"He wouldn't stop coming at me or attacking me and he tried to regain possession of that spanner himself so I kept whacking him until he fell over.
"I simply stepped over him when he fell and went out the shed … [and] dropped the spanner on the way out."
Accused noticed blood on hands after grabbing burger
Mr Penhall told the jury he thought he was going to die in the attack.
"I just struck at him until he stopped," he said.
"I wanted to survive … I was in complete shock."
Earlier in the trial, the court heard Mr Penhall threw away his bloodstained clothes and shoes on the side of a road after the attack.
They were later found by police, and forensic analysis matched the DNA to the victim.
Mr Penhall said he did not realise he had Mr Norris's blood on him until he went to eat a leftover meal in the car.
"I've grabbed my burger and gone to eat it and that's when I've seen the blood on my hands and I've just panicked," he said.
He admitted to discarding his bloodstained belongings.
"I didn't even know that the situation was that serious in the moment," he said.
"I was worried about the police or whatever."
Mr Penhall said he knew Mr Norris to be a violent man and on one occasion he had seen him try to stab someone during a fight.
Defence lawyer Grant Algie QC told the jury Mr Norris was a "bigger, stronger man" and his client was in a state of fear, panic and confusion.
"What he did in that shed when he wrestled the spanner from Mr Norris was what he genuinely had to do to save himself," he said.
Mr Algie said his client had disabilities from injuries he sustained in a motorbike crash when he was in his early 20s and from being shot multiple times during an ambush in 2008.
In his opening address, prosecutor Jim Pearce QC told the jury the nature of the attack would prove self-defence was not a lawful excuse in this case.
"To strike a man as he lay on the ground is, on the prosecution case, hardly acting in self-defence," he said.
The trial before Justice Malcolm Blue and a jury continues.
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