A JILTED lover plunged a knife into his ex-girlfriend’s chest and whispered “you’re going to die now bitch”, a jury at Oxford Crown Court heard yesterday.

Benjamin Thompson, 26, denies attempting to murder Harriet de Raeve at the house they had shared in Hurst Street, East Oxford, in April.

Ms de Raeve, 22, told the jury she ended a violent three-year relationship with Thompson and was collecting her final belongings when she was attacked.

Unemployed Thompson had recently discovered that she had slept with someone else after they had split up, the jury heard.

Ms de Raeve said that Thompson had crept up behind her, holding a 6in kitchen knife with a serrated blade.

She said: “I felt his right arm come round me. It didn’t hurt, but I could see I was bleeding.

“I turned around and said ‘what are you doing?’ It all happened very fast, but I grabbed hold of the blade as he pushed me against the chest of drawers.

“He whispered to me ‘you’re going to die now bitch’.

“I was trying to fight him off, but my hand went numb and I let go of the knife, at which point he stabbed me deeply in my chest. I couldn’t move. I struggled to breathe.”

She added that after she had slumped to the ground, Thompson sat on her stomach and with both hands forced the knife deeper into her chest.

She told the court she pleaded with Thompson to call for an ambulance.

But he sat on her a second time, putting all his weight on the knife.

She told the court: “He said ‘why won’t you die? It will be easier if you die’.”

Ms de Raeve, who studied physiotherapy at Oxford Brookes University, told the court Thompson then picked up a carving knife and stabbed himself in the stomach before collapsing at the top of the stairs.

He then called an ambulance, claiming that he had been stabbed by Ms de Raeve, the jury heard.

Paul Reid, prosecuting, told the jury the blade of the knife used in the attack was found stuck in Ms de Raeve’s chest up to the hilt.

She suffered a collapsed lung and doctors found that the blade was just one millimetre from piercing her heart.

Mr Reid told the jury that during the three-year relationship, Thompson had frequently behaved in a violent and controlling manner towards Ms de Raeve.

Thompson once punched her, giving her a black eye, and had pushed her mother down a flight of stairs during an argument, he added.

The court heard that Thompson, a former barman at Quod, in Oxford’s High Street, was a heavy online gambler who at one time won £66,000, with which he treated his partner to holidays and bought Ms de Raeve a pony.

He made repeated threats to kill himself during their relationship and once threatened to chop the pony in half with an axe following an argument with Ms de Raeve, Mr Reid added.

Mr Reid said: “He intended to kill her and attempted to do so.

“It’s only by good fortune she did not die.”

Thompson denies a charge of attempted murder.

The case continues.

mwilkinson@oxfordmail.co.uk