The son of a woman who was allegedly murdered along with her partner after a row erupted at a Canterbury house has told how the trouble started.

Connaugh Harris, 20, said there was shouting and he was protecting his mother Natasha Sadler when Foster Christian stabbed him in the arm.

His mother, her partner Simon Gorecki and a 16-year-old boy were then wounded, he claimed.

Connaugh, who was on leave from the Army, said in the recorded interview Christian had his hand covered with what looked like a carrier bag when he lashed out.

Connaugh said he had made a call to his mother and heard shouting in the background.
He asked if there was a problem.

Giving evidence in court, Connaugh said she did not want to tell him what was going on at the house, but she was worried and stressed.

“Alarm bells started ringing for me,” he said. “I didn’t know what the problem was at all. I went in to see what was going on.

“I didn’t want the situation escalating further. I wanted to nip it in the bud there and then rather than leave it. In the job I do (in the Army) I am trained to diffuse situations.

“That is what I tried to do. It was a situation no one wants to be in. It was to do with me because my mother was involved. I took the lead and went in.”

Connaugh said Mr Gorecki was pacing around agitated. Connaugh agreed with Christian’s QC Rajiv Menon it was time to leave the house.

But his mother went upstairs towards where Christian was.

“I tried to stop her,” he said. “I tried to get her back down. She walked up to the first landing. I went in front of her. I went to the first floor. They followed.

“I am protective of my mum. I didn’t want her getting hurt. It wanted to stop the situation escalating further.”

Mr Menon asked: “Did it not cross your mind as someone who had two years experience in the Army that four of you going up there mob-handed would make matters worse?”

Connaugh replied: “It was me trying to diffuse the situation. I didn’t know they were right behind me. I was concentrating on what he (Christian) was doing, rather than what my mum was doing at the time.

“The whole incident took about 30 seconds. The stabbing incident was seven to 10 seconds. In the 23 seconds I didn’t see them at all. In the seven seconds I did.”

Connaugh said Christian shouted: “Just ---- off Natasha.” He did not hear him say: “I haven’t got a problem with you Natasha, just go away.”

Connaugh, who described Christian as about his height of 6fft, quite skinny and bald, had said in his recorded interview he told him: “Mate, just ------- leave it. You are a ------- dickhead, just walk away.”

He put the palm of his hand on Christian’s chest, he said, to stop anything happening.

He agreed that in the next seven to 10 seconds “all hell broke loose”. He was stabbed in the arm. He didn’t see the teenager punch Christian twice.

The boy fell in front of him. He then followed him downstairs and helped him. He had described the boy asking if he was going to die.

“I didn’t see what happened after that,” he continued. “I am positive I didn’t see any of the others carrying weapons.”

Mr Menon suggested that before the four of them went upstairs to the first floor it was “a pretty minor and trivial squabble – an argument about nothing, basically”.

He added: “What aggravated it and made it more serious and resulted in the tragedy was the four of you going upstairs. That’s why we are here today.”

Connaugh said he did not open Christian’s door and did not see him take a knife from a block in his room and hold it up.

A suggestion that Mr Gorecki rushed passed and shouted “You black -------“, he said, was “ridiculous”.

He also denied Mr Gorecki lunged at Christian with a knife and that one of them whacked him on the head with a can.

“In the course of this attack, he defended himself,” said Mr Menon. “Tragically, your mother and Simon lost their lives in the course of him defending himself.”

Connaugh answered: “I think that would be ridiculous. There are no marks on him at all.”

Told by the QC his actions caused the tragedy, he said: “I didn’t do anything at all. I tried to do something and the situation escalated and was quite brutal.”

Christian, a 54-year-old mechanic, denies two charges of murder and two of wounding with intent, claiming self-defence.

The all-male jury at Maidstone Crown Court has heard a row over the temperature of a shower led to a bloody scene in which Ms Sadler and Mr Gorecki were stabbed to death and Connaugh and the boy were seriously wounded.

Mr Gorecki, had been taking the shower when Christian turned on a tap in the kitchen causing the temperature to change.

When Mr Gorecki shouted out Christian responded “**** off you mug”, said prosecutor Philip Bennetts QC.

Soon afterwards, he is alleged to have fatally wounded both Mr Gorecki, 48, and 40-year-old Ms Sadler and seriously injured Connaugh and the teenager, who cannot be identified for legal reasons.

Mr Bennetts said Mr Gorecki, who was 5ft 6in tall, was stabbed five times, four of the wounds being to his back.

Ms Sadler, who was the same height, had several wounds, one of which entered above her left eyebrow and “followed down” inside her lower jaw.

Mr Gorecki, a former fishmonger at the Goods Shed in Canterbury, died as a result of a collapsed right lung and Ms Sadler from a wound to her heart.

At the time of the shower incident at about 7pm on March 29 this year, Connaugh was at his mother’s home. He heard sounds of abuse and went with the boy to the house in Dickens Avenue, Canterbury.

The trial continues.