Customer tells jurors he tried to comfort victim as she lay on floor

A customer has told jurors he tried to comfort tragic Joan Hoggett after she was repeatedly stabbed in her store.

George Jones was a regular at the One Stop Shop and had told the court he had gone in on September 5 last year to buy some cans, but had not noticed anything unusual at first.

He told jurors at Newcastle Crown Court: “I bent down to get my cans and when I got back up and turned around I saw a woman on the floor.

“I thought she had fallen over.”

Mr Jones said he told Mrs Hoggett’s colleague, who was on the phone to the emergency services, to get her a chair as she “wanted to be up off the floor”.

Mr Jones added: “I asked her name and asked her age.”

The court heard Mrs Hoggett was conscious and responsive at the time and Mr Jones said he saw blood on the floor.

He added: “I just tried to comfort her and keep her awake until someone else got there. I asked if she had been robbed and she said no.

“I stayed until the police arrived.”

The first police officer at the scene, who had been out on mobile patrol, told the court “there was a lot of blood on the floor” when he arrived at the shop.

The PC told jurors: “She was breathing, her breathing was fairly shallow. Her eyes were open. She was looking at myself and my colleague as we approached her.

“The amount of blood, her face was ashen, it was immediately apparent something serious had occurred.”

The officer said there was “so much blood” on Mrs Hoggett’s shirt and on the floor and that puncture wounds were visible on her torso when her clothing was lifted up.

Leonard Smith QC, defending Ethan Mountain, said experts have concluded the killer was “psychotic, paranoid and delusional” at the time.

Mr Smith told jurors: “More likely than not, at the time he carried out this attack on a perfectly innocent woman, he was suffering an abnormality of mind function that substantially impaired his faculties.”

Prosecutors claim Mountain may have been planning to rob the shop when he carried out the killing.

Mr Smith said that was “speculation” and added “why would a rational person do that?”

Mr Smith told jurors Mountain has a long history of mental health problems and was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 12.

Mountain, 19, of Heaton Gardens, South Shields, denies murder.