A YOUNG woman on trial for murder has given her account of what happened as Carlisle man Lee McKnight was subjected to a "ferocious" attack in her home. 

Over 90 minutes this afternoon, Coral Edgar, 26, told a Carlisle Crown Court jury what she said happened in her Charles Street home in the city on the morning of July 24 last year when Mr McKnight arrived to sell her cannabis and walked through the front door.

At the time, Jamie Davison - one of the six people accused of Mr McKnight's murder - was in the kitchen.

But as Mr McKnight, 26, walked through the door Davison appeared behind her and there was a "bit of a confrontation", she said. She recalled somebody saying "shut up."

"The next thing I remember is Jamie Davison giving Lee a punch in the face," she said.

Edgar said she leaped over the settee and onto a chair, from where she saw the two men go into the kitchen, 'grappling' as they went.

She turned on the TV to 'drown out' the sound of the men arguing, she said. "I heard Jamie Davison asking for his 'paper'," said Edgar. "He sounded loud and aggressive."

Caroline Goodwin QC asked her: "Did you hear anything from Lee McKnight?" Edgar replied: "I don't believe I did. "If he did reply, I didn't hear it.

"I did hear punches - skin on skin; like someone getting punched."

She heard "constant punches" and it sounded "ferocious," she said. At the time, Jamie Davison was the only other person in the house, she said.

Asked how she felt about what was happening, Coral Edgar replied: "I was really scared."

The TV did not drown out the sounds, she said. As this went on, she was pushing her head into her knees and trying to cover her eyes and ears, she told the jury.

Later in her account, Edgar described going briefly to the kitchen door and seeing three people - Jamie Davison, 26, Jamie Lee Roberts, 18, and Arron Graham, 26, standing around as Mr McKnight lay on the floor.

"Can you describe to the jury what you saw of Lee?" asked Ms Goodwin. Edgar replied: "He was lying on the floor, nearly curled into a ball.

"There was blood on the floor. He was in a foetal position on the floor. I didn't go into the kitchen; I backed out."

But the three men were standing around and over Lee McKnight, she said.

The QC asked Edgar: "Why didn't you ring the police?" She replied: "I was too scared."

The murder of Lee McKnight - allegedly over a drugs debt owed to Davison - is denied by Coral Edgar and her mum Carol Edgar, 47, also of Charles Street; Davison, of Beverley Rise, Harraby; Arron Graham, of Blackwell Road, Currock; Jamie Lee Roberts, of Grey Street; and his father Paul Roberts, 51, also of Grey Street.

The trial continues.