A man found in the hallway of his house died from stab wounds inflicted by his girlfriend, an inquest was told yesterday.
The DPP did not bring any prosecution against Ellen Maughan Stokes (32), who at the time of the death on January 19th, 2002, was living in Slieveroe Crescent, Muirhevnamore, Dundalk, with Robert Stephen Price (39), the deceased, a truck driver originally from Gwynedd in Wales.
Dundalk Coroner's Court heard details of the history of the relationship.
Her mother, Mary Maughan, said that "a couple of times a week Ellen would call [ home] after he beat her up". When she would return to her parents' home, also in Dundalk, Price would "ring our house phone and threaten to burn us out. He'd threaten us and could ring at all hours of the day or all night. I'd have to take the phone off the hook," Mrs Maughan said.
On one occasion, Mr Price had thrown a chisel through the window of the house and had, on another occasion, threatened to kill Ms Stokes.
Mrs Maughan had told gardaí of both incidents.
Ms Stokes said two weeks before his death she needed five stitches over her eye. "I was terrified of him," she told gardaí.
During that assault she had hit him back with an iron bar because he was "dragging me by the hair".
After they returned from the pub on the night he died, she described how they had been in bed and he started complaining about her speaking to a woman earlier that evening.
He left the bedroom but returned with a knife. She told gardaí she believed he was going to kill her. He pulled her by the hair and downstairs she saw there was a knife missing from a block of five knives in the kitchen.
"I grabbed two of them. I was swinging the knife back at him to let me go." He grabbed her but then told her they would sort it out and to throw away her knives.
She threw them onto the hall floor but as she ran for the door, "he grabbed me and said 'I'm going to cut your throat, you slut.'" She said she did not remember picking up a knife but she had turned round and "stuck him". He fell to the ground and she ran to a neighbouring house and asked for an ambulance.
She had a stab wound to her neck.
The jury returned an open verdict and found the cause of death to be in accordance with the medical evidence that Mr Price had died from stab wounds.