A YOUNG woman was stabbed in the throat after telling her jealous ex-boyfriend she was seeing someone else, a court has heard.

Leanne Meecham, 26, below, was also stabbed in the chest at home in Park Street, Westcliff, and died a week later in hospital.

Simon Meecham, 42, her former partner, accepts he was responsible for her injuries, but denied murder when he appeared at Chelmsford Crown Court yesterday.

The court was told Simon then stabbed himself with the same knife three times before he was later caught by police on Thorpe Bay seafront.

Prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward told the jury: “This was a deliberate stabbing of Leanne Meacham when she posed no threat to him.

“It was done with a knife brought to the scene not with any real intent to do harm to himself, but rather to do her harm motivated by possessiveness and jealousy of the fact she was moving on with her life.”

The court heard Simon and Leanne were in a relationship for six years before her death in February this year.

It was not an amicable split and he desperately wanted to get back together, but she had started seeing someone else.

The trial heard Meecham was living with his sister at the time in Rosewood Lane, Shoebury, and he took a knife from the kitchen when he went to Leanne’s home on February 13.

The court heard after the attack, Leanne was discovered by a neighbour at about 9.30am and was later airlifted to the Royal London Hospital where she was placed in a medically-induced coma.

She died a week later on Thursday, February 20.

A post mortem examination revealed she died from a brain injury which was the result of a cardiac arrest following a stab wound to her neck.

After leaving the scene, Simon’s Land Rover was seen on the seafront and stopped by police.

The court was told he had stabbed himself three times – once in the liver – and was detained in hospital for treatment.

He was arrested on his release and police attempted to question him, but he replied no comment to questions.

Miss Ledward told the jury of six men and six women: “Meecham accepts he caused Leanne’s injuries, but that her being injured in this way was either completely accidental or at least not intended by him to kill or cause serious harm.” 

Miss Ledward said Simon’s version of events had the death taking place as part of a struggle in which Leanne was trying to disarm him of the knife he had brought to the scene in order to harm himself, the court heard.

The trial continues.