A MAN accused of stabbing a drinker in a St Helier pub has told jurors: ‘I had no intention of harming anyone at all.’
Paul Anthony Hadikin (58) said he returned to the pub armed with a large knife only intending to frighten the alleged victim – not to kill or injure him.
And he claimed that the man sustained the knife wound accidentally, after they ‘clashed’ in the doorway.
Mr Hadikin was giving evidence in the Royal Court on the third day of his trial for attempted murder and grave and criminal assault, both of which he denies.
Under questioning from Advocate David Steenson, defending, he said he had been in the Temple bar in Stopford Road earlier in the evening of 3 December last year and got involved in an argument with a 33-year-old man, who he said head-butted him.
Mr Hadikin said he hit his head as he fell to the floor and claimed: ‘I was concussed. I was dazed and confused. I was in fear.’
Advocate Steenson asked him: ‘Were you angry about being head-butted?’
He replied: ‘I was confused. I can’t recall exactly what I did. I can’t recall exactly what happened. I can’t recall leaving the bar but I must have gone straight home.’
He admitted returning to the pub later with a large knife but only to threaten or frighten the man who had head-butted him.
Mr Hadikin said: ‘We clashed in the doorway. I felt the knife enter his body. I turned and ran away in fear.’
The victim received a stab wound six or seven inches deep, which almost cut his colon in half.
He was placed in an induced coma for three weeks and spent a further month in hospital afterwards.
The court heard that without prompt hospital treatment he would have died from loss of blood.
When the police arrived at Mr Hadikin’s home later that night he surrendered himself to them.
He told jurors: ‘I didn’t know what I had done but I knew it was me they were looking for.’
During cross-examination, Crown Advocate Matthew Maletroit, prosecuting, said: ‘We say you couldn’t fight him [the victim] physically so you wanted to get him back some other way.’
Mr Hadikin replied: ‘That’s not correct.’
Crown Advocate Maletroit also questioned him about text messages he had sent his daughter on the night in question, which read ‘It’s all over. I’ve just killed someone’ and ‘Help me. He’s dead’.
He asked: ‘Why did you tell your daughter you had stabbed someone if you hadn’t?’
Mr Hadikin replied: ‘I don’t recall what was going through my mind at the time. I was aware of the knife penetrating his body as we clashed in the doorway.’
The Crown Advocate said: ‘You didn’t tell your daughter or son that there had been an accident. You didn’t tell the police there had been an accident.
‘You went there with the intention of stabbing the victim, and that is exactly what you did. At the time you wanted to kill him.’
Mr Hadikin replied: ‘No.’
Earlier, jurors heard a phone call which Mr Hadikin had made to his former wife from La Moye prison in January. Describing the weapon, which has never been found, he said: ‘It was massive. It was more like a sword than a knife.’
Mr Hadikin told jurors: ‘There is no way I could carry a knife of that size. It would be too big.’
The trial continues.
