MURDER accused Jack Wall said today (Tuesday) if he had planned to kill his former girlfriend he “certainly wouldn’t have done it” at their house.

Wall, 22, was being cross-examined by prosecutor Jane Bickerstaff QC after being charged with murdering Amelia Arnold, who he lived with at Hadrian’s Walk in Stevenage, when he said: “I’ve admitted that I’m responsible for killing Amelia. I’m suggesting that it wasn’t planned, it just happened.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen – I didn’t expect that to happen. I didn’t sit there making plans.

“If I’d planned it I think I would’ve done things a little bit differently. I certainly wouldn’t have done it at our house.”

Ms Bickerstaff told Wall that the killing didn’t have to be planned to be murder.

Wall, who denies murder, told jurors at Blackfriars Crown Court in London that “there are certain things you have to lie about it”, but when Ms Bickerstaff suggested that included murdering his 19-year-old former girlfriend, he said “no”.

When asked how Miss Arnold had ended up with two black eyes which were recorded in a post-mortem, Wall said: “I don’t know.”

Ms Bickerstaff alleged that Wall punched Miss Arnold in the face on the evening of November 7 last year before striking her repeatedly with a dumbbell bar, after she asked Wall to move out.

The prosecutor said neighbours had heard a “high-pitched scream”, followed by a thud.

Wall said on that night he had argued with Miss Arnold and they had agreed he would move out.

He said that he had killed Miss Arnold the following morning after she attempted to hit him with a dumbbell bar.

He told jurors: “That is 100 per cent true.”