Joe Harker
A man who stabbed his 14-year-old daughter in the heart and claimed they were having a 'play fight' has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 15 years behind bars.
The jury found Simon Vickers, 50, guilty of murder after they heard accounts of how he stabbed his daughter Scarlett in the chest with a kitchen knife, causing a wound 11cm deep.
The girl's mother, Sarah Hall, was the only other person in the room at the time and told Teesside Crown Court that Vickers loved his daughter and would never hurt her.
However, a jury convicted him of murder over manslaughter by 10 to two votes, and Vickers was sentenced to life imprisonment as a result.
Advert
The Crown Prosecution Service has said that exactly what happened might never be fully known.
Christopher Atkinson, Head of the Complex Casework Unit for CPS North East, said: "It is difficult to understand what motivated Simon Vickers to take the life of his daughter, Scarlett.
"In the absence of any plausible explanation on his part, we may never fully understand the circumstances which led to her tragic death.
"What is abundantly clear is that the account provided by Simon Vickers was wholly inconsistent with the forensic evidence in this case.
Advert
"Crucially, the medical expert we instructed to examine Scarlett’s injuries made it clear that they could only have been caused had the knife been firmly gripped as it made contact."
Home Office pathologist Dr Jennifer Bolton explained that the way the knife went into the 14-year-old's chest meant it must have been used with force.
Vickers had been drinking wine, watching the Euros football and had smoked cannabis earlier in the day, with Hall saying that he and his daughter had been throwing grapes at each other for fun.
She said that she'd snipped at Vickers with a pair of kitchen tongs and Scarlett called him 'wimpy' when he said it hurt.
Advert
Hall said that she turned away to prepare a meal and heard Scarlett say 'ow', at which point she turned back and saw her daughter bleeding.
The mum called the police, saying they'd been 'messing about' and that Vickers had thrown something at their daughter 'and he didn't realise'.
Vickers claimed that his daughter had leapt towards him while play fighting and it had been a 'freak accident', saying that he'd picked up what he thought were the kitchen tongs and swiped them across Scarlett's chest.
Prosecutor Mark McKone KC told the jury that he accepted Vickers loved his daughter and was 'devastated' at her death, but the blow that killed her could not have been caused by being accidentally swiped across the chest.