DOMINIC Isom's account of the "struggle" between himself and partner Samantha Henderson before her death is "frankly bizarre", a prosecutor today alleged.
Ms Henderson, who was 25, died outside the couple's Corfe Castle home on January 21 this year.
Isom, 28, has admitted causing the injuries which led to her death, as well as wrapping her body and dumping it in the lake at Ham Common on the same day, but denies murder.
On the sixth day of his trial at Winchester Crown Court, he wept as he again told jurors that he had been pulling Ms Henderson away from one of her children backwards when she had grabbed onto the doorframe.
Isom, of Halves Cottages, Corfe Castle, said he then slipped, accidentally "catapulting" Ms Henderson over one shoulder, which caused her to strike her head on the shed outside.
This impact caused a nine-and-a-half centimetre gash to Ms Henderson's forehead, the court heard.
Isom told jurors that as he lent over Ms Henderson to check her injury, she grabbed him around the neck and said: "I'm going to kill you."
In the ensuing struggle, the defendant said he put his own hand around her throat, an act which led to her death, although he had no intention for this to happen.
Prosecutor Ian Lawrie QC yesterday questioned Isom further on how Ms Henderson's head injury had occurred.
"She would have fallen on top of you, wouldn't she?" he asked.
"There would be nothing to propel her, catapult-like, over the patio, would there?"
He also asked Isom about the moment he had first seen the injury to Ms Henderson's forehead.
The defendant said he was "gutted" upon realising the extent of the injury, adding: "I didn't mean to do it."
Mr Lawrie gave details of the cut, and asked Isom if the reality wasn't that she was immediately "stunned" by the collision.
"You've got a longer reach than Ms Henderson, haven't you?" Mr Lawrie asked, adding that it would have been "the easiest thing in the world" a man of Isom's "reach, build and strength" to push Ms Henderson away had she reached for his neck.
"I didn't know what was going on," Isom said, adding that he "wasn't thinking straight" and "Sam was going mad."
During his summing up to the jury, Mr Lawrie called Isom's account "peculiar", and said it was up to jurors as to whether they find it "remotely credible".
"None of his explanation withstands scrutiny. It doesn't make sense," he said.
"He's just making it up."
But Nigel Lickley QC, defending Isom, said the defendant "did not want to harm [Ms Henderson], he did not want to kill and he did not want to cause serious bodily harm", urging jurors to accept Isom's evidence.
"You've got to be sure that he used unlawful force, that he was not defending himself or the child, and that he was using, at some point, unreasonable force, unlawful force [to find him guilty of murder]," he added.
"He has got to have that murderous intent for it to be murder."
The trial continues.
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