TRACIE ANDREWS yesterday described in detail how a “porky man with big staring eyes” killed her fiancé in a road rage attack.
In her first day in the witness box at Birmingham Crown Court, where she is on trial for murder, Miss Andrews told the jury that she and Lee Harvey had spent the evening at the Marlbrook pub in Bromsgrove.
On the way home, she said, she was looking for a cassette in the glove compartment of Mr Harvey's Ford Escort when the car swerved slightly and Mr Harvey swore. She said: “Lee said ‘I think they want to race’. When the car came up at the side of us, Lee was doing gestures with his hand and I saw the passenger making gestures with his hand.”
According to Miss Andrews, the car overtook them and stopped on Coopers Hill, a few minutes from their home in Alvechurch. Mr Harvey stopped.
Miss Andrews told the court: “The driver of the vehicle got out of that car and so did Lee ... I told Lee to get in the car and to leave it, and that he was nearly home.”
She said the lane was “pitch black”, but she could see the two men prodding each other. “I heard Lee say ‘What's your problem? You think you are Nigel Mansell.’ There was swearing going on and prodding with fingers.”
The driver then went back to his car and the passenger got out and came towards Mr Harvey. “I heard swearing and I heard the passenger call Lee a ‘Paki bastard’ (due to his dark skin). I saw the passenger strike out at Lee, I could not be sure how many times, but it was more than once. Lee fell down onto the floor and then that's when I got out of the car.”
The passenger was crouching over Mr Harvey, but she could see no weapon. She swore at the man and he punched her in the face.
“He called me a slut and he punched me in the face. He hit me really hard and straight away I fell. I remember tripping over Lee as I fell. I put my hands out and I banged my head on the road.”
All she could remember, she said, was the driver shouting ‘Leave it, Jez’ to the passenger a “porky” man with staring eyes. He walked back to the car and they drove off.
Mr Harvey was by then breathing strangely and she realised she was covered in his blood after kneeling down to see how he was and cuddling him, she said.
She knew there was a house near by to which she could have gone for help, but said: “I got up a few times. I went over to the car. I think I went to run towards the house and I went back, I didn't know what to do. I was in a really bad way myself.”
Asked by Mr Thwaites why some of her hair was found in Mr Harvey's hand, she said she had not remembered him pulling it. It was “very usual” for her hair to fall out because it was in bad condition from being bleached.
Cross-examining Miss Andrews, David Crigman, QC, accused her of lying about the route they took back from the pub after two witnesses claimed to have seen their car near the murder scene without another car following it.
Mr Crigman said: “This car is a phantom. It doesn't exist, does it?” She replied quietly: “It does.”
Mr Crigman challenged Miss Andrews to admit that the couple had had a fierce argument in the car which had caused Mr Harvey to miss a turning. He said: “Your relationship was always on the edge of some kind of explosion wasn't it?”
“Not always, no.”
He said: “If there had been a fly inside the windscreen on that Sunday, no doubt it would have heard just such an argument going on.”
Miss Andrews replied: “No”.
Mr Crigman went on: “It was at the heart of this case that you and he had a relationship that sooner or later erupted in increasing levels of seriousness.”
She replied: “No”.
Next page: Andrews takes stand to deny murdering fiancé