Nicholas Dill's brother has described watching murder-accused Andre Hypolite brandish a knife at him while his girlfriend tried to intervene.

Andre Dill told Supreme Court yesterday that he was woken by the sound of "a big fight" at the shack his brother lived in next to his home in Pearman's Hill, Warwick, on Boxing Day morning 2004.

Mr. Dill, 39, went over there, explaining that his initial thought was his brother might have been hitting his live-in girlfriend Stacey Pike, although that had never happened before.

"I went and kicked at his door. I was trying to bust it in," recalled Mr. Dill. When this was unsuccessful, he went to a window and started trying to knock it in. A makeshift curtain at the window then fell down.

Mr. Dill said he could see his brother and Hypolite inside, both naked, with Hypolite brandishing a knife at his brother who was slumped against a door.

Hypolite's left arm was raised, he said, with a knife in his hand. Ms Pike was pulling on Hypolite's arm.

"It seemed like she was trying to get a grip on his arm and couldn't get it properly," he told the jury.

"She was behind him. He turned and chased after her...after that he came straight back over to my brother... he came back with the same hand, with the same knife at my brother. That's when I turned my head and went inside."

Mr. Dill went to his home to call the emergency services.

"I remember going to the phone and saying 'someone's killing my brother'," he told the jury.

When he returned to the house, he said Nicholas Dill and Hypolite had a lot of blood on them and Ms Pike had spatters on her white shirt. He shouted that the Police were coming and got towels for his brother, who was lying in a bath tub bleeding and being assisted by Ms Pike.

The prosecution's case against Hypolite is that he took crack cocaine with Nicholas Dill, 43, and Ms Pike, now 37, on the morning in question. Ms Pike performed a sex act on him – she says in exchange for drugs – and Mr. Dill also performed a sex act on Hypolite.

Hypolite then suggested he had sex with Mr. Dill, but Mr. Dill changed his mind just prior to the act. At this point, it is alleged that Hypolite stabbed Mr. Dill in the back and chopped Ms Pike in the head when she tried to intervene.

He is said to have escaped through a window after the Police were called.

Hypolite denies murder and wounding Ms Pike with intent to cause her grievous bodily harm.

Defence lawyer John Perry QC claims that a fight broke out between Nicholas Dill and Stacey Pike when he walked in on her about to have sex with Hypolite. Mr. Perry alleges that Ms Pike – who has a manslaughter conviction for stabbing another man 17 years ago – accidentally stabbed her boyfriend during the fight.

She denied this version of events when she was on the witness stand.

Cross-examining Andre Dill yesterday, Mr. Perry pointed out that his original Police statement, made on the morning of the incident, did not refer to Ms Pike trying to intervene by gripping Hypolite's arm. He also pointed out that the statement put the knife in Hypolite's right hand.

Mr. Dill agreed with both points, but said of making the statement: "Matters were very distorted then. Reading this (statement) right now, reading this I can see I was just completely rattled."

At one point he told Mr. Perry: "You're trying to make Stacey look guilty for killing my brother. You're wrong."

The case continues.