Cleared – the daughter who knifed bullying father to death
A DAUGHTER who stabbed her ‘controlling’ father to death after he flew into a rage and attacked her wept yesterday as she was cleared of his murder.
Jessica Breeze, 20, had been subjected to years of abuse by Colin Brady, who would ‘kick off’ and ‘smash the place up’ if she came home late.
The nursery worker admitted stabbing her father in the back with a kitchen knife after an argument over her boyfriend escalated into violence. She claimed it was self-defence
A court heard Brady had punched and threatened to kill both Miss Breeze and her mother Kelly, who had tried to intervene in the row last June. Miss Breeze, who was 19 at the time, grabbed a knife and plunged it into his back.
She told the jury: ‘ He was punching me in the face with his fists. He said he was going to kill us.
‘I didn’t want him to die. He was still my dad, I still love him. I didn’t want him to die, I just wanted him to stop.’
Miss Breeze had been trying to dial 999 when Brady demanded she give him the phone.
She told the court she had earlier tried to flee the family home but found the doors were locked and tried to climb out of a bedroom window but her father grabbed her and attempted to strangle her.
Brady, 49, then slapped or punched his daughter several times before her mother tried to get between them.
As the row moved into the kitchen of their home in Middlesbrough, Brady threatened to kill both women, demanded to know where their phones were and said he would smash
At court: Jessica Breeze up their cars. Prosecutors claimed Miss Breeze stabbed him in the back as he was leaving the house.
Nick Dry told Teesside Crown Court: ‘He managed to walk briefly into the hall and into the front room looking,
Kelly said, like a zombie. He collapsed on to the settee asking his daughter what she had done.’
Miss Breeze told jurors she could not remember what had happened fully.
The knife penetrated 18cm into Brady’s left lung and, although paramedics took
‘Acting in lawful self-defence’
him to hospital nearby, he could not be saved.
The court heard Mr Brady had previous convictions for violence, including causing grievous bodily harm with intent. He had attacked Kelly Breeze in an assault a PC said was the worst he had seen.
The jury found Miss Breeze not guilty of murder and not guilty of an alternative charge of manslaughter. She wept in the dock, and friends and family cried in the public gallery as the verdict was read out.
Outside court Miss Breeze’s solicitor Sean Grainger said in a statement: ‘ The jury accepted she was acting in lawful self- defence of herself and her mother when under a sustained and violent attack by her father.
‘Further, whilst Jessica was brought up in a highly toxic home environment where she and her mother were regularly subject to extreme physical and emotional abuse by her father, Jessica wishes to make it clear she loved her father, she still does and wishes he was still here.
‘She now wishes to rebuild her life, get back to work and move on from the sevenmonth ordeal she has endured since her arrest.’