How a forensics expert helped convict father who claimed he accidentally killed his daughter in a play fight
How a forensics expert helped convict father who claimed he accidentally killed his daughter in a play fight
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Simon Vickers told police that the two had been playfighting before the 14-year-old suffered an 11cm deep stab wound to her chest. “I must be the unluckiest man in the world,” were the words used by Simon Vickers, a father who had watched his daughter bleed to death after suffering a 11cm stab wound to her chest.
![[Scarlett was an only child and was stabbed shortly after throwing grapes towards her father]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/07/09/10/Untitled-design---2024-07-08T181233.676.jpg.article-962.jpg)
Describing 14-year-old Scarlett as the “love of his life”, Simon Vickers told police that they had only been play fighting in the kitchen when he accidentally stabbed her with a kitchen knife. Despite him telling the jury it was a “freak accident”, his defence was blown apart by the forensic evidence, which indicated it would have been “practically impossible” to inflict such an injury without using force.
![[The knife allegedly used to kill Scarlett at her home in Darlington (CPS/PA)]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/20/13/dde4a572e901e65678899c3d8c1c0f27Y29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzM3NDY1MjYx-2.78686500.jpg)
After deliberating for over 13 hours, he has now been convicted of murder and is facing life behind bars. For the Vickers family, the 5th of July last year had started no differently to usual. Simon and his partner of 27 years, Sarah Hall, had watched a football game on the television, drank a few glasses of wine, and Vickers had smoked a cannabis joint.
![[Teesside Crown Court heard that Simon Vickers denied both the murder and the manslaughter of his daughter Scarlett (Owen Humphreys/PA)]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/17/13/c647c6a4feb9d4e0640782972e80e59cY29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzM3MjA1ODY1-2.11809538.jpg)
Yet it would soon turn to a nightmare after a family scuffle turned into a horror scene. After emerging from her bedroom to say she was bored, Scarlett and her father began throwing grapes at one another, while Ms Hall cooked bolognese. “Then I went to try and get her and she tried to push me away,” he told police. “I grabbed the tongs and threw them at her. That’s it, that’s all it was.
