Woman accused of boyfriend's murder claims he was 'trying to cut out her unborn baby'

A woman now accused of murder told a friend that a fight that ended with her boyfriend dead had been over their unborn baby – which he had been trying to cut out of her womb with an eight-inch knife, a jury heard.

Dionne Christie, now 23, denies murdering her then partner, Jevin Haig, then 21, from Niddrie, Edinburgh, in the incident in her flat in Falkirk.

A woman told the High Court in Stirling that Christie, her best friend at the time, was pregnant by Jevin and already had two children by other men.

She said she had spoken to her on the phone on June 27, 2022, the day after Jevin’s death, and Christie “sounded different” that day.

She told prosecutor Graeme Jessop KC: “I don’t know how to put it into words – the tone in her voice. She was different, a lot quieter than usual.

“I’m sure she told me he had tried to kill the baby.”

Mr Jessop asked: “What did she say she did in response to what happened?”

She replied: “I’m sure that she said that she stabbed him.”

The witness said that in the background of the call, she could hear Christie’s mum “saying something like it was self-defence”.

She said she told police on July 5 about the call despite receiving threats not to speak.

In a statement, she said Christie had told her that she and Jevin had “been fighting”.

She told police that Christie had said they’d had “a big argument because he didn’t want the baby and he had held a knife up to her belly”.

She added: “She said he tried to cut her belly open. She said it was like an outer body experience [sic]. Dionne then said ‘I just flipped out. I lost it, and that’s why I did it’.”

Mr Jessop asked: “Did she say she had stabbed Jevin Haig?”

Sobbing, the woman replied, “I think so, yes, I’m not 100% sure.”

The woman said Christie told her about an earlier argument she and Jevin had, weeks before.

She said: “From what I remember, I think it was about the baby. I think she told me he’d chucked a remote at her.”

Mr Jessop asked what Christie had said she’d done when this had happened.

She replied: “That she’d stabbed him.”

The jury heard earlier that two months before his death, Jevin had been limping and told his mother Christie had stabbed him in the leg.

In a statement to police after the incident, Christie said that Jevin had told her before his final visit to her flat that he was going to come through and “put the baby out of me”.

She said she was “very upset” about this but still made arrangements for him to come over for the weekend.

She said when she woke up on the Sunday morning she “could tell he was in a mood” but tried to calm him down, saying it was his child she was carrying.

Describing the lead-up to the final incident, she said Jevin had stood over her in the bedroom where she had been packing his things into bags, grabbed her by the wrists, and swung her into the bed.

She moved round the bed and saw Jevin holding his knife, still in its case.

He then grabbed her from behind, she said, with the knife in one hand and the case in the other.

She said: “I saw the tip of the blade coming close to my stomach, so I bent forward to avoid it touching me and shouted, ‘Arrh!’

“I felt like I was trapped, and I had to struggle very hard to move, and the more I did, the harder he squeezed me.”

She said Jevin then released his grip, and she wasn’t sure why. He walked from the bedroom to the living room.

Christie told police: “I saw him lift up his top to the middle of his chest with the hand that wasn’t holding the knife. I saw there was blood all over his stomach area.”

She said Jevin asked her to phone her mother, probably because she worked at a hospital, and went back to the bedroom, sat on the floor, then “slouched” to one side before lying down.

After going to a downstairs neighbour to call her mum, she ran back up and tried to stem the bleeding with a pair of his boxers and a towel before using his phone to ring 999.

She said: “I removed the knife from his grip. His grip was loose.

“I started to do chest compressions, but when I did, more blood started appearing from the wound.

“His lips and ears started turning blue.”

A police officer said she interviewed Christie for over four hours after the incident, taking a statement, and over the entire time she never asked where Jevin was or how he was.

Another, one of the first two officers on the scene, told jurors she had spoken to Christie while the ambulance technicians worked on Jevin.

Christie, who had some blood on her leg, told her that she and Jevin had been “bickering all day” and he had stabbed himself.

One officer noted her saying: “I’m 12 weeks pregnant, and [we] had been arguing about that. He kicked off at 11 this morning so I kicked him out. He kicked the door glass so I let him back in. When he came back in he was smashing stuff about.”

Christie continued, according to the officer: “We were pushing each other. I had a hold of him, and then he had a knife, and I thought I’d been stabbed, so I stepped away, and then he bent over and started turning purple, and then there was blood.”

She said he had phoned for an ambulance “straight away”.

She added, according to he officer, that the knife was one Jevin carried in his waist band at all times.

She said: “I don’t know why he carries it, but he had it in his band today.”

The PC said Christie had not been placed under caution when she spoke, because she was not treating her as a suspect. The court has heard that Christie was not, in fact, arrested until the following year.

A post-mortem revealed that Jevin died from a single stab wound to the heart.

Christie, of Polmont, denies murdering Mr Haig by stabbing him on the body with a knife, having previously evinced malice or ill-will towards him.

She also denies assaulting him on various occasions at the Wright Street address between January 1, 2022 and June 25 – the day before his death – uttering threats of violence towards him, pushing him, attempting to strike him with a knife, repeatedly stabbing him with a knife, punching him on the head, scratching him, biting his hand, and striking him on the body with a pole.

She further denies assaulting a previous partner to his injury, on various occasions between March 2020 and March 2021 in Falkirk by punching him on the head and body, presenting a knife at him, and threatening him with violence.

The trial, before Lady Poole and jury, continues.