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A young woman stabbed her violent criminal father twice in the chest, piercing his heart, after a heated argument when he called her a slut, a jury has been told.
In his opening address to the Newcastle Supreme Court jury today, crown prosecutor Brian Costello said Maddison Hickson fled the scene after the stabbing, telling a friend she wanted her "mummy".
Costello said Hickson's friend, Taylah McDonald, then put the knife in the dishwasher and put it through a wash cycle.
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Hickson has pleaded not guilty to murdering her father, Michael Carroll, 51, at a house in Tenambit, near Maitland, on January 16 last year.
McDonald pleaded not guilty to one count of misleading police about the knife used in the stabbing with intent to hinder the discovery of evidence, and one count of being an accessory after the fact to murder.
Costello said Carroll had been sitting in the lounge room just after 7pm when he argued with his daughter and called her a slut.
The prosecutor said Hickson was swearing at her father when he stood up and they appeared to be holding or hugging each other, but not in a friendly way.
Hickson then suddenly ran into the front yard before her father followed four seconds later, collapsed and died from the two stab wounds to his heart.
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Hickson told a friend standing outside: "Take me to my mummy, I want my mummy."
She then called her mother and told her: "He attacked me. I think I stabbed my dad."
Costello said Hickson had stabbed her father in a spontaneous response out of anger and frustration following the heated argument and had not been in fear of him or acting in self-defence.
But he said if the jury believed she had been fearful, they could still find her guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter if they considered what she did was not a reasonable response in the circumstances.
Defence barrister Peter Krisenthal said Hickson's case was a fairly simple one because she was just defending herself.
Krisenthal said Hickson ran out of the house after the stabbing and told her friend: "Get me away from him (her father)."
He said Hickson was choking with emotion when she later told police: "He tried to stab me."
Krisenthal said Hickson had been 21 at the time and her father had not been present for much of her life because of his criminal lifestyle.
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"Mr Carroll had a tendency to become violent, including with the use of weapons, to assault and intimidate people with whom he had a grievance," the defence barrister said.
"Mr Carroll would regularly resort to physical violence if he didn't like what someone said."
Krisenthal outlined how Carroll had been a convicted criminal, used a baseball bat and pliers to assault one of his victims, and had punched and tried to kick his then-pregnant partner in the stomach after she refused his demand to have an abortion.
The defence barrister said Carroll's use of methamphetamine caused him to become paranoid and aggressive.
Hickson's older sister, Lacey, told the court their father had not always been in their lives because he was so often in jail.
She said their father would visit them whenever he was released from prison and promised to come back the next day but never did.
"There wasn't a year he didn't go to jail,'' Hickson said.
She said Maddison Hickson was the most hurt when their father failed to come back to see them because she was the one of his three daughters who most wanted a relationship with him.
"She was the one who sat on the kerb crying when he didn't come home,'' Hickson recalled.
The trial, which is expected to take three weeks, continues on Wednesday.
Source: 9News
