Shaunagh Downing, the Ammanford woman charged with stabbing 19-year-old Dan Jonas outside his home, has appeared in the dock at Swansea Crown Court to begin giving evidence in her four-day trial.

Wearing glasses and dressed in a beige blazer, a beige and black top with her hair tied back in a ponytail, Downing claimed her visit to Mr Jonas’s home at 5.30am on the morning of July 3 was to ‘resolve an issue between us’.

“I felt really upset and annoyed that he was saying certain things to me and I just wanted to speak to him,” she said.

Twenty-two-year-old Downing claimed the issue began earlier in the evening after they had spent three hours drinking with respective friends at Number One Wind Street. They left together at 3am while their friends followed behind.

“Dan asked if he could come back to my house and I said no because my mum was away and she doesn’t allow me to have people back” she said.

But after allowing her other friends back to her home, Downing claims Mr Jonas ‘turned quite nasty’.

“He was upset when he couldn’t come back to the party and called us absolute sl**s,” she said.

Snapchat messages were then played to the jury which revealed the way in which Downing responded to Mr Jonas’s comments concerning what the Crown termed her ‘sexual health, personal hygiene and private life’.

“I’ll f****** put you in the grave before you go to jail, pal,” she was heard saying in one message.

I don’t give a **** where you are. I’ll go to your f****** house and I‘ll petrol bomb it now.”

The Crown also claims that Downing made threats to Mr Jonas’s family.

“Answer the phone now. Honest to God, I am going to kill your sisters and your f****** mother and your dad. I’m on my way to your mam’s. Good luck pal, you’re dead.”

When asked by the Crown why she responded to Mr Jonas in such a manner, the nursery nurse said she was ‘unable to explain my actions'.

“It was just a silly thing that came out in the heat of the moment,” she said during her cross examination.

“I know they are awful, awful words but I didn’t intend no meaning behind them.

“I’ve known Dan for a long time and I didn’t want us to argue.”

Downing claims she left her home at around 5.30am and walked the short distance to Mr Jonas’s property. She denies being in possession of a knife which the Crown allege she carried with her inside her dressing gown pocket.

“When I knocked on Dan’s door, he opened the side gate and called me a slag,” she said.

“He grabbed me by my arm, spun me around and pulled me from behind. His right arm came over my shoulder and my neck, and his eyes didn’t look like they were there. It was quite scary.

“He had a knife in his right hand and he brought it over my shoulder. I bit him twice because that was the only way I could release him and get him off me.”

Downing denies touching the knife during the altercation.

“His right arm got caught and I remember him shouting at me that I’d stabbed him. But I hadn’t.”

Earlier in the trial, two witnesses for the prosecution described how Downing arrived back at her property repeating, 'I’ve stabbed Black Dan! I’ve stabbed Black Dan!'

She was asked to explain this comment by barrister Helen Randall for the Crown.

“I was in such a state of shock because I thought this was what people were going to believe…that I’d stabbed Dan and I was scared.”

The trial continues.