Palmerston woman Yvonne Lulda pleads guilty to manslaughter after stabbing man in heart

The court heard a witness saw the woman ‘cradle the victim on the ground’ for ‘a couple of minutes’ before she got up and ran away from the unit complex.

Crown prosecutor Hamish Riley said ‘after being stabbed by the offender, the victim staggered backward briefly and collapsed on the ground’.

A Palmerston woman who stabbed her partner in the heart during a drunken fight last year initially tried to blame the senseless killing on “someone else”, a court has heard.

Yvonne Lulda, 36, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court on Thursday to reckless manslaughter after stabbing the 26-year-old to death at a unit in Gray where the pair were living last year.

Crown prosecutor Hamish Riley told the court Lulda had earlier been jailed for negligently causing serious harm and paroled to a residential rehab facility where she met the man in June.

On July 2, she was granted day leave from the facility but instead of returning that evening, cut off her electronic monitoring device and only came back four days later “visibly intoxicated”.

Mr Riley said Lulda was then exited from the program and the pair began living with a friend in the Palmerston suburbs where they were drinking with others on the morning of July 7.

By about 4pm, he said Lulda became “upset” with the victim and repeatedly punched him to the mouth before they “resumed being good to each other and kissing each other”.

Between 6pm and 8pm they were left alone in the unit and Lulda again began to argue with the man before reaching into her pocket and arming herself with a kitchen knife with a 13cm blade.

“The offender raised the hand holding the knife up to the height of her ear and intentionally stabbed the victim once to the upper left side of his chest,” Mr Riley said.

“After being stabbed by the offender, the victim staggered backward briefly and collapsed on the ground.”

Another woman who witnessed the stabbing called triple-0 and saw Lulda “cradle the victim on the ground” for “a couple of minutes” before she got up and ran away from the unit complex.

Mr Riley said emergency services arrived but the man was unable to be revived and was pronounced deceased at about 8.46pm.

“Police located the offender sitting on the kerb on the other side of the unit block with blood on her hands — the offender was visibly intoxicated,” he said.

“During her arrest, the offender said ‘I never do anything wrong, no, I was just there to support him, I love my husband so much, I never do that to him, someone else did that to him, not f***in’ me’.”

Justice Sonia Brownhill adjourned the hearing until June 14 when Lulda will return to court for sentencing.