Neighbour heard scream, saw man running past on night of Teah Luckwell’s alleged murder

A 13-month-old girl was stuck inside a house where her mum was allegedly brutally murdered ‘for hours’ before the gruesome scene was discovered.

A neighbour heard a “terrifying” scream and looked out her window to see a man running past in the early hours of the morning Teah Rose Luckwell was killed, a court has heard.

Donna Searle told the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday she would “never forget” the sound she heard that night, adding it was difficult to describe because she now knows what happened to the young NSW mother.

Ms Luckwell was 22 when she was found lying in a pool of blood just inside the front door of her Tamworth unit after 9pm on March 28, 2018.

She had three significant stab wounds, one of them fatally piercing an artery in her neck.

Her 13-month-old daughter, unharmed, had been inside with her mother’s body for “a number of hours”, the court has been told.

Teah Luckwell was found dead in her Tamworth unit late on March 28, 2018. Picture: Ashleigh Gleeson

Prosecutors allege Ms Luckwell was murdered about 4.20am that day by her former neighbour, Jesse Leigh Green, who has also been charged with a break and enter and assault with a weapon on the same night.

Mr Green, 30, has been found unfit to stand trial and is facing a special hearing, where he has been taken to have pleaded not guilty to the three offences.

Ms Searle told the court she was awake reading from about 3am on March 28, unable to sleep, when at some point her dog growled.

“It was a weird sort of a growl,” she said. “Then I heard a scream.”

Asked to describe the scream, Ms Searle said it was “very loud” and “terrifying” before beginning to falter.

“I can’t really describe … you know, I don’t know whether that’s because I now know what happened,” she said.

“The scream in my head I will never forget. It was not good. It was a single scream. It was protracted. It was long. And yeah, that’s the best I can do.”

Police allege the young mother was murdered by Jesse Leigh Green, who has entered pleas of not guilty at a special hearing. Picture: Facebook

“We hear a lot of screams … there’s always a lot of noise going on. But this one made me get out of bed.”

Ms Searle said she looked out her window and saw a “young guy” running past her house.

He was hunched over, wearing three-quarter shorts, and “obviously affected by something”, she told the court.

“He was going like that,” she said, crossing her hands over her chest, “and he was saying ‘Oh sh-t. Oh f--k’.”

Ms Searle said she went out to her mailbox to see if anyone on the street was hurt before going for a cigarette out the back of her house, where she noted the time was 4.20am.

Another neighbour, Adrian Kenny, told the court he was sitting outside his house with a coffee and a cigarette in the early hours of March 28 when he heard a loud bang and a woman scream.

The bang was a metal sound, he said, similar to “someone kicking a fence”.

He described the scream as “like somebody had been frightened”.

“Like you see in the movies, a lady gets frightened, she goes ‘Ahhh!’” he said, leaning back with his hands in the air.

“And that’s pretty much what it was like.”

A neighbour says she heard a “terrifying” scream in the early hours of March 28, 2018. Picture: Facebook

Prosecutor Brian Costello told the court on Monday that two men named Mark Morgan and Joshua Allen were walking near Ms Luckwell’s house that night when they saw a man in a dark hooded top who flashed a torch at them.

CCTV footage, as well as purchases at a nearby service station at 4.24am and 4.27am, suggested they had seen the man at about 4.15am, Mr Costello said.

Mr Morgan said on Tuesday that when the figure saw them, he shone a torch, put his hood over his head, and ran off.

“Me and Josh looked at each other and said ‘F..k that was sketchy’,” Mr Morgan said.

He told the court the pair began to worry the man might come for them and be carrying a blade.

“We started to spin out ourselves,” Mr Morgan said. “I said, if this person runs at us … you grab the knife and I’ll bite his face off, you know?”

Mr Morgan initially said he thought this incident happened two weeks before he heard about Ms Luckwell’s death.

But he was taken to a prior statement in which he told police it happened a day or two before he heard about the death, and agreed that sounded right.

Mr Morgan and Mr Allen each said the other had remarked the figure might be Jesse Green.

The crown’s circumstantial case uses CCTV footage and evidence about the scream at 4.20am to place Mr Green near Ms Luckwell’s unit that night.

Mr Costello also argued Mr Green’s alleged break in and assault with a weapon the same night indicate he was minded to enter houses as a hostile intruder.

But Mr Green’s barrister Stuart Bouveng said there were 10 other people whose potential motive and opportunity to murder Ms Luckwell must be examined.

Mr Bouveng also said the police investigation would come under the microscope, in particular whether they properly investigated suspects other than Mr Green.

The hearing continues.