This is the moment Scarlett Vickers’ dad tells police they were “just mucking around in the kitchen” after he was accused of stabbing his teenage daughter to death.
Scarlett Vickers, 14, died from rapid blood loss after a knife plunged 11cm into her chest, piercing her heart. Simon Vickers, 50, denies murder and manslaughter, claiming the pair were “mucking around” in the kitchen of their family home, in Darlington, Durham, on June 5 last year.
Jurors at Teesside Crown Court watched footage of Vickers being booked into custody at Darlington police station after being arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. He was later rearrested on suspicion of murder after Scarlett succumbed to her fatal injury.
Vickers said while being booked in: “I just want to know how my daughter’s doing. We were mucking about, playing in the kitchen, and for some reason this has gone really weird. We were mucking about. I can’t believe this.
“Please someone tell me. What’s going on? We are going on holiday to f***ing Gran Canaria in six weeks. F***ing hell. I don’t believe this is happening.
“We were cooking tea. Just mucking about in the kitchen. I don’t understand how this has happened. Honestly.” Emergency services were called to the family’s semi-detached home in Geneva Road on June 5 to find Scarlett collapsed on the kitchen floor.
Vickers, who admitted drinking four glasses of wine and smoking half of a joint, told the court he accepted causing Scarlett’s fatal chest wound but had no knowledge of touching the green-handled knife.
Giving evidence, Vickers sobbed as he delivered his version of events, telling jurors that his daughter’s death “could only ever be a freak accident”.
He suggested that he must have swiped the knife without realising, after attempting to “swing” a pair of kitchen tongs.
Vickers told the jury of a “theory” that Scarlett may then have accidentally come onto the knife after it “hit the side of the hot-plate and stuck out over the side of the counter.”
Vickers said: “I hadn’t done anything unlawful. I had thrown a pair of tongs as far as I was aware. We were mucking about, harmless fun. There was no knife in any equation whatsoever.”
Prosecutors claim Vickers must have stabbed his daughter “deliberately with the knife” because wound was “too deep” to have been caused accidentally.
Jurors were told by a Home Office pathologist that it would be “practically impossible” for a thrown knife to cause Scarlett’s fatal chest wound.
Mark McKone, KC, prosecuting, told him in cross-examination: “I will have to suggest to you that you have not told the truth about how Scarlett was wounded.”
Vickers sobbed as he gave evidence, telling jurors he would never have hurt secondary school pupil, Scarlett, his only child with long-term partner Sarah Hall.
Asked by his barrister Nicholas Lumley, KC, if he intended to cause her serious injury, Vickers told Teesside Crown Court: “No, never, never in this world. I would have given her my life.”
Vickers told how the family had been preparing for a holiday in the Canary Islands and that Scarlett had been looking forward to the end of the school term. He denied losing his temper, telling the court he was “relaxed” and “happy”.
He said the family were in their small kitchen when he asked them to pick up the thrown grapes because he wanted to bring their Labrador dog inside.
He said: “Sarah started picking the grapes up, Scarlett threw a few more so that’s when I started tickling her.
“We were at the back door, I was tickling her at the back door. Sarah starting nipping me on the back with a pair of tongs, on the butt. I turned around and tried to grab the tongs off her, as I tried to grab them I caught my little finger on them. I did shout out.
“Scarlett said ‘dad, you’re a wimp’. I said ‘how would you like that?’, just mucking about.”
Vickers said he then started “wafting” Scarlett’s hair and she pushed him away towards the kitchen counter when he swiped at the kitchen tongs.
He added: “As I went to sit on the seat, I heard Scarlett shout ‘ow, ow’. There was delay of a couple of seconds. I looked up straight at her and I said: ‘what’s the matter?’
“She was just staring. She had a pink fluffy pyjama top on and all of a sudden lots of blood started coming out.
“I got off my chair, Sarah had grabbed a towel. It was like ‘what the f***?'” Vickers broke down as he told the court how he had been refused permission to attend his daughter’s funeral while on remand in prison at HMP Durham.
He said Scarlett was “our life, our whole purpose” and a “fantastic daughter”. He told the jury: “I spoiled her. As my mum would say, she had me wrapped around her little finger.”
Mr McKone put to Vickers: “Isn’t the reality that this explanation of a swiping movement towards a pair of tongs, causing a knife to go into Scarlett’s chest by 11cm, is just a lie by you?”
Vickers replied: “No, it is not. It certainly is not. The police assume that I have held a knife and stabbed my daughter which is something that just wouldn’t happen.
“Why would I harm my daughter? If someone held a gun to my head and told me to stab my daughter, I would be shot.”
