The man accused of murdering a love rival as he sat in his car by throwing a knife at him told a jury today: “I was aiming at the car. I wasn’t aiming at him. I didn’t want to hurt him!”

John Buchanan, who denies murder, admitted making threats towards Archie Ward, the father of his girlfriend’s two children.

“I said I’d stab him. I’d run him over... stupid things I shouldn’t have said. Basically I was just trying to impress my girlfriend.

"To act like the big man..but I am not a big man I am just a boy.”

The 22-year-old said the 6ft 2ins rival had made threats against him after he began seeing the mother of Mr Ward’s children, Hannah Blake.

Buchanan claims Mr Ward taunted him “in colourful terms” by saying he was still sleeping with Ms Blake.

“He was trying to wind me up but I was never planning to stab him or run him over. I was frightened, scared, petrified of him.”

On the day of the incident in June last year, Mr Ward turned up at the home of a neighbour where they were having a barbecue.

“I immediately ran into the house, shut the door and picked up a knife. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do.

"I admit I started goading him which, looking back, wasn’t very clever. It was stupid.”

Buchanan said that Mr Ward ran into the house after him and threw a packet of charcoal at him as he crouched on the ground expecting a beating.

Mr Ward was pulled away by others in the house and went to his car.

“He went to his car and was still screaming. I went to the front door and threw the knife. I was aiming at the car. I wasn’t aiming at him.”

Earlier the jury at Canterbury Crown Court heard how Mr Archie Ward would have survived the knife injury had the blade landed a couple of millimetres in either direction.

The 40-year-old bled to death after the kitchen knife, which had been thrown between five to 10 metres away, severed an artery in his right leg.

Pathologist Dr Olaf Biedczycki told the jury that had the blade had entered the leg in an extremely unlucky area.”

He added: “You could have a wound a few centimetres away from where this was and the person would have had just damage to skin and muscle and would not have received a fatal injury.”

John Buchanan, 22, of St John’s Crescent in Ramsgate, has pleaded not guilty to murdering his love rival, Mr Ward.

Defence barrister Oliver Saxby QC asked: “The knife has travelled all the way across and straight through the open( car) window and continued its downward course and into the leg, yes?”

The Doctor said that but for eye-witness testimony “he would have been surprised that it had happened in (that way). I shall never see the like again.”

Mr Saxby: “It’s a massive co-incidence isn’t it that this proved fatal?”

The pathologist added: “Yes”

Mr Saxby: “The next co-incidence is that it struck the leg there. A millimetre either side and we wouldn’t be here?”

The doctor agreed.

The jury is expected to retire to consider its verdict tomorrow afternoon.