The mother of a 14-year-old girl murdered by her father maintains he is innocent and would ‘never harm’ their daughter.
Scarlett Vickers was killed during a ‘freak accident’ at her home in Darlington last year while she and her dad Simon were allegedly play-fighting in the kitchen.
The schoolgirl was stabbed through the chest and died almost instantly from her wounds, and Simon, 50, was jailed for a minimum of 15 years after a jury rejected his version of events as ‘unconvincing and wholly implausible’.
But throughout the trial Scarlett’s mum Sarah Hall consistently supported her partner of 27 years, and remains adamant her daughter’s death was accidental.
Speaking for the first time since the verdict, Ms Hall told the BBC: ‘I know he’d never harm Scarlett.
‘I was there that night, there were no arguments, there was no temper, no shouting.’
She said she was shocked when the jury’s verdict was read out and thought she had ‘misheard’.
‘It’s just been a never-ending nightmare,’ she added.
Ms Hall claims the the night of July 5 had been a normal Friday for the family – Simon was relaxing in the living room watching football while Scarlett hung out in her bedroom playing online games and chatting with friends.
Sarah was in the kitchen making dinner for the family, and at around 10pm the father and daughter joined her and began to play around.
The grieving mother is unsure of exactly what happened next, but says she and her daughter were throwing grapes into each other’s mouths and having ‘just a fun fight’.
Vickers also joined in shortly afterwards, and began ‘mucking about by the back door’ with his daughter while her back was turned.
She said she accidentally nipped Vickers with kitchen tongs, to which he reacted, and their daughter ‘jokingly’ called him a wimp.
Ms Hall recounted how Vickers replied to Scarlett, asking ‘how would you like it’, before swiping the tongs across the worktop towards her.
Vickers gave differing versions of what happened next during the trial, but Ms Hall believes the tongs caught a knife on the kitchen top and left it protruding outwards at the same time Scarlett moved towards her father, and that she ran onto the 11cm blade.
Home Office pathologist Dr Jennifer Bolton said that the injury must have been caused by a knife held with force and was not accidental. Mr Justice Cotter said Vickers’s version of events was “unconvincing and wholly implausible”.
Sentencing him to life, Mr Justice Cotter accepted the defendant was ‘devastated’, that he was a ‘broken man’, and that there was no premeditation or intention to kill.
The judge said: ‘You have lost your only child at your own hand, and you will always live with that awful fact.’
He added: ‘Simon Vickers, only you know precisely what happened in that kitchen on that Friday evening which led to you fatally stabbing your only daughter in what should have been the safety of her own home.
‘It was a momentary but devastating act of anger.’
But Ms Hall told the BBC that the judge’s remarks are ‘absurd’, adding Vickers ‘never had a flash of anger’.
She also responded to speculation after the trial that her husband had been abusive, telling the broadcaster: ‘No, never. He was understanding, comforting. [Our relationship] was very supportive, never controlling.’
Ms Hall says her family was a happy one and they ‘did everything together’.
Vickers and Scarlett had a very loving relationship, Ms Hall says, adding they were ‘as daft as each other’.
When challenged about how she can stay with Vickers, Ms Hall says she is still resolutely supporting him.
‘How can I blame him for an accident when I know he’s in as much pain as I am?’ she says.
‘If I thought he’d done it deliberately then no, I wouldn’t have been here [doing this interview].
‘I would have protected her with my life, as would he.’
Vickers’s sentence is set to be reviewed by the Court of Appeal, after solicitor general Lucy Rigby KC claimed it was too lenient.
Ms Hall says she dreams about her daughter every night, and awakes with horror each morning at the realisation that she’s really gone.
‘I just want her back so much,’ she says. ‘I’m not sleeping well, I’m not eating well. I’m just existing.’
‘It was a happy house,’ she added. ‘I see the memories everywhere.’
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