A court has heard that a woman accused of stabbing her boyfriend to death told Police: "He beat me, he beat me. I just couldn't take it any more".

Prosecutors say Andrina Smith, 26, knifed Edward Allan (Sleepy) Dill, 35, in the neck after he slapped her.

Opening her Supreme Court murder trial on Monday, Senior Crown counsel Carrington Mahoney said she and Mr. Dill — the father of her baby — argued after she returned from a night out with girlfriends.

He claimed that after Mr. Dill slapped her, Smith armed herself with a knife from the kitchen. While Mr. Dill was behind a door trying to block her from a room she plunged it through the door and into his neck.

Det. Con. Patricia Burgess was among the Police officers called to the scene at Smith's home in Cedar Park, Devonshire, in the early hours of October 16, 2006.

In evidence yesterday, she described seeing Mr. Dill — a person known to her — slumped on the front step of Smith's apartment, being tended to by two women.

She heard Smith say: "I stabbed him. He beat me," and told the jury, "Miss Smith was very emotional and crying and I tried to calm her down."

While assisting her towards a Police car, Det. Con. Burgess said she appeared unsteady on her feet before she "latched away" from her and screamed at her grandmother Patricia Francis: "I want my children, you f******g b****h."

Besides the one-year-old girl fathered by Mr. Dill, Smith also has another daughter who was aged nine at the time. Both were home at the time of the alleged murder.

The detective told the court Smith was arrested and handcuffed after she fell to the ground and taken to Hamilton Police Station. On the way there in the car, she said, the defendant told her: "I only went to the boat club. I cooked his dinner and I left him a note. I folded his clothes. Before I could get in the door he was beating me and I stabbed him in his neck."

Det. Con. Burgess said it was in an interview room at the station that Smith made the comment about not being able to take Mr. Dill beating her any more. She noticed one of her eyes was swollen shut and she had an abrasion to her knee. She also told the court Smith had intoxicants on her breath.

The defendant was taken to hospital, where news was broken to her by a doctor that Mr. Dill had died. According to the detective, Smith's response was: "I didn't mean it. He would not stop beating me."

During evidence on Thursday, Smith's neighbour Joezine Butterfield-Wolffe claimed Police officers who arrived at the scene before the ambulance saw Mr. Dill covered in blood but "just walked away, just left him there".

Asked by defence lawyer Charles Richardson whether she refused to assist neighbours tending to the injured man, Det. Con. Burgess replied: "No, I did not. I felt he was in a position not to be moved," explaining this was from First Aid knowledge.

In other evidence yesterday, Josia Wolfe, a neighbour of Smith, agreed with Mr. Richardson that the accused stands at "five feet or less in height" and weighed no more than 160 pounds at the time of the incident. Mr. Dill, she agreed "would have been well more than 200 pounds" — and was "a very big guy" who was easily twice Smith's size.

Smith denies murder. She is on bail, and the case continues.