A woman admitted stabbing her boyfriend to death — but told a court she acted in self defence after he punched, slapped and tried to choke her.

Andrina Tamara Smith sobbed as she told jurors hearing her murder trial that she never intended for Edward Allan (Sleepy) Dill to die at her hands.

"I didn't mean to hurt him. I certainly didn't mean to kill him. All I wanted him to do was just stop hitting me, that was it. I didn't mean for any of this to happen — I mean, we have a daughter together," she wept yesterday.

"I have to look at her every day and see him. I have to one day explain to my daughter what happened to her father and I have to tell her that I was the one that caused it."

In an afternoon of emotional testimony, Smith, 26, explained her 35-year-old boyfriend was violent on previous occasions during the four years they'd been together.

"We had good times, we had bad times. Sometimes he would hit me," she said of their relationship, explaining this was sparked when she went out and he didn't know where she was.

"Every time he hit me he would punch me in my face, pull my hair. I used to have black eyes and sometimes my mouth would be busted open. If I had to go out in public I would wear makeup to cover my black eyes."

According to the prosecution version of events, Mr. Dill slapped Smith during an argument at her home in Cedar Park, Devonshire, in the early hours of October 16, 2006. She allegedly reacted by getting a knife from the kitchen and plunging it through a wooden door and into his neck as he tried to block her from her bedroom.

Smith denies murder. Taking the witness stand as the defence case opened yesterday, she gave a very different account of events.

According to prosecutors, she went to the Mid Atlantic Boat Club in Devonshire that night with a girlfriend — but Mr. Dill arrived, saw her talking to a man she knew called Mikey Puckerin, and got mad.

When she returned home later, she said, he accused her of messing around with the other man in an argument that began as he was changing their one-year-old daughter's diaper.

He left — she believed to confront Mr. Puckerin — but returned later while she was in bed, turned on the light, swore at her and told her to get up. Smith said he repeatedly asked her who she had gone down to the boat club to see.

"That's when he gripped me. His hands are big — he had me between my chin and my throat," she told the court, going on to detail how he repeatedly punched her face.

When she started to scream, he put his hand over her mouth and carried on.

Smith said she told her boyfriend: "You need to take your s**t and get out" — prompting him to deliver what she described as "one ringing slap" before punching her again.

She "slid out" of her bedroom and headed to the living room but, she said, Mr. Dill caught up with her and gripped her by her hair — causing her to scream and him to again put his hand over her mouth.

She claimed he then dragged her to the darkened kitchen — telling her "I feel like f*****g killing you girl".

"He pushed me up against the counter and he started choking me and punching me in my face. I was trying to push him off of me but he was just too strong and he just kept doing it.

"I released my hand and I was feeling on the counter for something to hit him with and I felt a handle. I didn't know what it was. I knew it was some type of kitchen utensil.

"Once I picked it up I swung in his direction and he immediately let me go. I remember him putting his hand up to his neck and he ran inside," she said.

Smith told the jury after Mr. Dill left the room she heard him swear before knocking on the door of her grandmother, who shared the apartment, and asking her to call 911.

"Then he staggered out towards where I was in the living room and he said to me 'Andrina, you stabbed me, I'm dying'."

Smith cried as she described how she did not realise her boyfriend was bleeding at first — until blood got on her.

"From there, I just started to freak out."

She agreed with evidence from prosecution witnesses that she told her grandmother: "He was beating me, he wouldn't stop beating me." She also acknowledged that she beat Mr. Dill on his chest as he lay bleeding and neighbours were trying to help.

"I was telling him 'I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it. Look what you did to me," she claimed.

Smith — who was arrested at the scene — told the jury she did not know how apparent stab marks in her bedroom door got there. She said the Police never accused her of stabbing Mr. Dill through the door — with the first time she heard this version of events being when the prosecution case against her opened on February 26.

The defendant is due to continue her evidence today.