A YOUNG woman accused of luring Carlisle man Lee McKnight to her house before he was 'beaten to the point of death' said one of her co-defendants told her: "It wasn't meant to go that far."

Coral Edgar, 26, told Carlisle Crown Court Jamie Davison made the comment after she overheard Mr McKnight being subjected to "ferocious" violence.

It happened in the kitchen of her home in Charles Street, Carlisle, in the early hours of July 24 last year after Mr McKnight, 26, arrived there to sell her cannabis, Edgar told the court as she gave her account.

She and Davison and four other people all deny murder. Coral Edgar said she had not expected violence when Mr McKnight arrived at her home that morning.

She described how Davison had "appeared" behind her after she let Mr McKnight into her home.

There was a confrontation and Davison punched Mr McKnight in the face, she said. 

She then saw the two men "grappling" as they went into the kitchen, where she heard them shouting and Davison - sounding "loud and aggressive" - asking for "paper."

She did not hear Mr McKnight say anything, said Edgar.

She said: "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."

She turned on the TV but this did not drown the sounds, she said.

She also covered her eyes and ears, she said. Edgar then described going briefly to the kitchen door and seeing three people - Jamie Davison, 26, Jamie Lee Roberts, 18, and Arron Graham, 26, standing there as Mr McKnight lay on the floor.

"Can you describe to the jury what you saw of Lee?" asked defence QC Caroline 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."

Jamie Davison later come back into the living room, she said. Asked if he said anything, she said: "He did apologise.

"He said something along the lines of he was sorry and it wasn't meant to go that far." She added: "I wasn't capable of thinking properly. I just wanted them out."

She said she was too scared to call the police.

Edgar said she had not spoken of what she saw during her police interview because she was still too scared but now she felt that had had "got to" share what she knew.

She was asked what she felt when she went back to the chair in the living room after seeing Lee McKnight on the floor in the kitchen. "In a state of shock," she said.

Ms Goodwin asked Edgar whether she after walking away from the kitchen door she had heard anything else.

The defendant said: "Not for a couple of minutes but then I heard a repeated attack. Ferocious punches. It's hard to describe."

It was some time after this that Jamie Davison appeared in the living room and apologised. Ms Goodwin asked Edgar whether she was capable of standing up to the men in her house.

"No," replied Edgar.

Davison had asked her to ask her mum to provide "a lift", she said. She saw Jamie Lee Roberts using her phone as he kept walking backwards and forwards while she sat in the chair.

"What was going on in your mind?" asked the QC.

Edgar responded with: "All kinds...fear, shock." When her mum Carol arrived, she said, she had pointed to the kitchen and told her to "brace herself."

A short time later, she said, Paul Roberts - Jamie Lee's father - had arrived and the teenager then left shortly after this. Edgar was asked again why she had not told the police what she had seen.

"I was scared of repercussions - and being called a grass," she said. Under further questioning, she confirmed that the only violence she had directly seen Jamie Davison use was the punch he delivered to Lee McKnight near to the front door.   

She was asked how she felt when she heard about all of the injuries that Mr McKnight had sustained that morning.

Edgar's answer was: "I felt sick; I felt horrible." So why, asked the QC, was she talking about what she saw now? Edgar said: "Because it's the right thing to do."

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.