GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A murder suspect claims she was acting in self-defense when she killed her boyfriend.
TiQuonda Campbell took the stand Thursday in her own defense. She's accused of fatally stabbing her boyfriend Tyress Malcome in May 2011.
Campbell broke down several times as she described her rocky relationship with Malcome.
“An argument always led to physical abuse,” Campbell said on the stand.
Campbell outlined several times when she says she and Malcome got into physical fights. At different times, both were arrested leading up to the fatal stabbing.
In a police interview with Campbell just hours after Malcome’s death, she admitted to stabbing him with a kitchen knife in their Norcross apartment.
The question a jury is now considering is whether she was legally justified in doing it or should go to prison.
“I didn’t mean to,” Campbell said in tears in the May 2011 interview with police. “I was just protecting myself.”
Campbell insists she reacted because he was hitting her and she’d been through years of abuse, not only from Malcome, but others too. Campbell claims battered women’s syndrome.
Prosecutors say she acted out of rage and should be punished.
“She told me that she tried to hurt him on Mother’s Day,” Campbell’s friend Anita Torres told jurors Thursday.
Malcome’s mother also took the stand.
“He told me she had tried to stab him and he was afraid to go back home,” said Lillian Hayes.
Campbell says she never called police on Malcome because she loved him.
Campbell is expected to be back on the stand Friday morning.