A mother told today of the moment she saw her son collapse with a fatal stab wound in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

Svetlana Kandate claimed she then saw her partner Juris Popovs with a bloody knife in his hand at their flat in Teynham, near Sittingbourne.

Miss Kandate said of her son Dimitri Titovs: “I was sitting with him telling him everything was going to be OK.”

But paramedics could not save 21-year-old Mr Titovs and he died soon afterwards. Popovs, 47, denies murder.

Maidstone Crown Court has heard there was bad feeling between the two men. Mr Titovs had lived at the flat, but Popovs resented him being there.

Mr Titovs and friends went to the flats at Henley Place, London Road, late on New Year’s Eve to see his mother.

Screened from the dock and giving evidence through an interpreter, Miss Kandate, 41, said she had planned to have a “joyful” new year’s celebration, but her plans were ruined by an argument with Popovs.

“I wanted to show everybody it is not necessary to just drink vodka and there could be some joy,” she said.

But she added: “The men were sitting around the table talking and I was bored.”

She spoke to her son by telephone and he arranged to collect her in a car and take her to celebrate the new year.

“Everybody was happy, joyful. Nobody could forecast the tragedy that was going to happen” - Svetlana Kandate

Asked how much alcohol she had drunk, Miss Kandate said she had about a litre bottle of “fizz” from a Russian shop and champagne at midnight.

“I was not one 100% sober, but I was not drunk as much as I can’t remember something,” she said. “Everybody was happy, joyful. Nobody could forecast the tragedy that was going to happen.”

Her son and friends arrived shortly before midnight and she and Popovs had an argument.

Miss Kandate said after Mr Titovs was wounded, she put her shoes on and went to get a coat. She remembered the police arriving.

She then jumped out of a window on the first floor and next recalled being in the street.

Asked why she jumped, she replied: “Dimitri said if I stayed in the flat, I would get the same as what happened to my son.”

Miss Kandate was due to be questioned by Popovs’ QC Ali Bajwa.

The trial continues.