Dad who fatally stabbed 14-year-old daughter claims harmless fun turned deadly in drunken mixup with tongs

A British dad charged with stabbing his 14-year-old daughter to death inside their home testified that the two were “mucking about” and having “harmless fun” when she was fatally slashed.Simon Vickers, who is facing murder and manslaughter charges in the death of Scarlett Vickers in Darlington on July 5, called the whole thing a “freak accident,” the BBC reported Monday.

“We were having harmless fun.There was no knife in any equation,” Simon Vickers, 50, told the jury in Teesside Crown Court.

“I was throwing a pair of tongs as far as I was aware.But the accused killer dad conceded that what he thought were tongs turned out to be a knife that cut a 4-inch gash into his daughter’s chest, causing her to bleed to death inside the home.“Then she just stopped breathing,” he testified.“There was nothing.

Her eyes just went like a doll’s eyes.”Vickers said he had about four glasses of wine while he, Scarlett and her mother, Sarah Hall, watched soccer on TV before the fatal incident, but maintained it was all an accident.Hall testified that she had taken the knife out to cut garlic bread and placed it next to the tongs.“We would never harm our daughter,” she told the jury.

“She was our life, our purpose.”Simon Vickers testified that the family of three was “inseparable,” and described Scarlett as “cheeky” and “normal” — calling her a “fantastic daughter.“I spoilt her.She had me wrapped around her little finger.

I like to see her happy, put a smile on her face.”But the case has shocked and rattled the quiet North England town, with Vickers arrested following the fatal stabbing and later denied permission to leave jail to attend the teen’s funeral.In testimony last week, a forensic pathologist said that it was “practically impossible” for a knife thrown the way the dad described to have caused the teen’s fatal injuries, another BBC report said.

Prosecution witness Jennifer Bolton said an eight-inch kitchen...