I WILL SLIT YOUR THROAT
Mum tells jury how vicious, raging ex burst into house and slashed her
A SCARRED young mum told a jury yesterday how her ex-lover burst into her home with two knives and slashed her face open. Siobhan Stevenson said Matthew Grady told her: “I’m slitting your
throat.” He denies attempted murder and his lawyer insisted yesterday that he only meant to slash Siobhan’s face, not kill her.
Mum-of-one Siobhan, 23, said Grady, 30, slashed her from ear to mouth in her daughter’s bedroom.
She added: “I just seen one of the knives then that’s it – there was blood.
“I thought he’d slit my throat. I grabbed a towel and tied it tightly around my neck.
“Blood was spraying everywhere, all over the walls and ceiling. Then he closed the door.”
Siobhan had three hours of emergency surgery to repair a gaping wound almost five inches long. She needed more than 40 stitches.
Grady launched the attack at Siobhan’s flat in Springburn, Glasgow, on January 29.
She had dumped him two weeks earlier, believing he had cheated on her.
Siobhan said Grady phoned on the day of the attack to try to sort things out. But he soon flew into a rage, called her a “stupid daft cow” and threatened to attack her.
“I told him to leave me,” Siobhan said. “I wanted to sort my head out, as I found out he’d been cheating with my ex-friend.
“Ten minutes later he called in a rage, saying, ‘I’m going to slash you.’
“He was shouting and bawling, saying he was coming up to the house in 20 minutes.
“He was calling me names and saying, ‘I’m coming up there just now. I’m coming through your door.’
“He said, ‘You’re getting slashed.’ I never thought someone who supposedly loved me would ever do something like that.”
Later, Siobhan was in the bathroom washing her hands when she heard a bang. She looked in the mirror and saw “Matthew with two knives up in the air” in the hall.
“I turned and he ran towards me,” she told the court. “He said, ‘I’m slitting your throat.’”
Siobhan said she tried to shut the bathroom door but Grady jammed his foot in it. He thrust an arm through the gap, trying to slash her, and hit her on the shoulder.
She said: “I was like, ‘Please, please don’t do this’ – begging.”
Siobhan dropped to the floor in terror. “I curled in a ball,” she said. “I thought I was going to get murdered.”
She said she went to crawl into the living room, “trying to escape for my life”.
But her sister Ladonia, who was in the room with her partner and a child, had shut the door to stop Grady getting in.
Siobhan went into her child’s room and Grady followed. She said he stood over her as she lay on her back, her arms raised to try to protect herself.
“He leaned right down and was looking into my eyes,” she said.
Siobhan said Grady then struck her with a knife. She said: “He tried to get my neck.”
Ladonia told the court Grady thought there was a man in the house.
He burst into the living room at one point and demanded: “Where’s the guy?”
Ladonia added: “He was shouting that he’s going to slit her throat and she was screaming, ‘Please! Please!’ “That’s all I can remember – her screaming.” Ladonia said that after the attack, Siobhan was holding a purple towel with “blood squirting out the top of it” and shouting: “He’s slit my throat!”
The court heard Ladonia was screaming with the child in her arms.
Taxi driver Kamal Ahmed, 29, said he picked Grady up at his home in Maryhill and drove him to St Monance Street in Springburn.
He said the accused went into a flat while
Blood was spraying everywhere .. all over the walls and the ceiling SIOBHAN
he waited, but was back in less then two minutes.
Kamal said police pulled him over on the way back to Maryhill. He added: “I thought there was maybe something wrong with my car but the young gentleman said, ‘Don’t worry, they’re looking for me.’
“The police were shouting, ‘Put the knife down!’ He was shouting, ‘I want to die!’”
Siobhan was rushed to Glasgow Royal Infirmary and had plastic surgery the following day. When a nurse removed her stitches later, she counted around 44.
Cross-examining Siobhan, defence counsel Neil McCulloch suggested that while Grady had inflicted “an extremely serious and unpleasant assault upon you”, he had not meant to kill her.
He said: “I put it to you that Matthew’s intention was to slash your face.
“If he had wanted to kill you he could have done so, couldn’t he? But he didn’t.”
Mr McCulloch asked Siobhan: “Once he has slashed your face, he stopped, didn’t he?” She replied: “When he saw the blood, yes.” Siobhan said she saw “the fright in his eyes” before he left her in the bedroom. The trial at the High Court in Glasgow continues.