‘I am not goIng to dIe here’

Rotimi Edwards said in evidence he believed he was attacked because he made a joke about what Lane was wearing.

He had asked Lane calmly if he had taken his cocaine and he responded “abruptly and quite aggressive”.

“I said it doesn’t matter. You didn’t have to go on like that. I kind of made a joke. I said: ‘What’s the point of stealing it when I am giving it away?

“‘It’s kinda like wearing Adidas and Nike together.’ Everybody laughed. He was obviously annoyed, to say the least.”

Mr Edwards, who has a previous conviction for drug-dealing, told the jury of seven women and five men: “I made this joke and I feel like it got me stabbed. It just didn’t make sense.

“I don’t know who stabbed me, but I got stabbed. I am happy to be alive and see the birds in the sky.”

Mr Edwards said he had taken about two grammes of cocaine he bought for £80 to Ashford with him. He took some at his friend’s home, while he was at bars and also at the party. He also drank alcohol.

“It made me jolly,” he said of the drug. “I was having a good time.”

When he was about to leave he came downstairs from the toilet there was a man he had seen in one of the bars earlier standing at the bottom.

“He didn’t have a knife,” he said. “He was waiting for me. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs rigid like a soldier. I got to the bottom of the stairs and felt a punch to my stomach.

“I was in the passage. I felt pain in my stomach. My life was leaving me. I didn’t see him do it. When I was in the kitchen I saw a brown handle coming out of my belly.

“I looked down again and it had gone. One particular girl practically saved my life. I was thinking: I am not going to die here.”

An ambulance came and took him to hospital.

Mr Edwards declined to refresh his memory from his police statement saying: “The trauma is never ending. I don’t like to relive those memories. It makes me upset when I see that.”