THE mother of a young model and actress allegedly stabbed to death by her boyfriend told of her daughter’s desperate phone calls hours before she was killed.

Karyn Killiner said her daughter, Amy Barnes, had pleaded with her to take her home just hours before she died.

A murder trial jury was told that Amy, aged 19, was stabbed repeatedly with a kitchen knife at her grandmother’s house in Moss Street, Farnworth, where she lived with her boyfriend, Ricardo Morrison.

Morrison, aged 22, from Birmingham, denies murder on November 8 last year. Giving evidence on the second day of the trial at Manchester Crown Court, Mrs Killiner said she had concerns about the relationship and had arranged for her daughter to go to Bolton’s Fort Alice women’s refuge.

On the night before she died Amy had visited her mother and she was “excited” about arranging a birthday meal for a girlfriend and had bought two new dresses for a girls’ night out, Mrs Killiner said.

But the next morning, the day she was killed, her daughter phoned, upset and crying. “When you answered the telephone, what did Amy say to you?” Stuart Driver, prosecuting, asked Mrs Killiner.

“She said, ‘Hello, please will you come and get me?’ I said, ‘Yes darling.’ “She said, ‘Will you come now?’ and started to cry.

“I said, ‘What's wrong?’ She said, ‘I just want to come home. I want to come home and be at home. Mum, he’s said some awful things to me.’ “She said, ‘I have told him that he's not going to control me any more.’”

The jury heard Amy’s grandmother had gone to work and Morrison had gone out and taken all the keys with him, leaving her alone locked in the empty house.

While he was out, angry text messages were exchanged between them, the jury was told, Amy called the defendant a “woman beater” and told him, “I hate you. It’s over. Leave me alone.”

Her mother arranged for Amy’s father, Andrew Barnes, to go round with a key and she told her daughter to pack some bags. “I said if he comes back and says anything or starts anything you telephone 999. She said, ‘I will mum’ she promised me, ‘I will.’”

Mrs Killiner then set off in her own car on the 20 minute journey from her home in Bolton to Amy's house, but on the way two calls to her daughter went unanswered and she left messages on the answer phone, the court heard. She panicked and dialled 999 herself, but while on the way Mr Barnes had arrived at the house and found his daughter dying in a pool of blood.

“I do remember Andrew did phone me,” Mrs Killiner said. “He said, ‘Get here Karyn, get here quick. It’s Amy.’”

Mrs Killiner was told by the emergency services to go straight to the hospital, the ambulance carrying her daughter, passing her on the way.

She went in to see Amy in the emergency room then called Melda Wilks, the defendant’s mother, who is accused of assisting an offender, by helping to destroy evidence by washing his blood-stained clothes, it is alleged.

“I said, ‘Your son has stabbed my daughter,’ over and over again. That’s all I said.”

“Did she reply to you?” the prosecutor asked. “No. She screamed and was crying.”

The court has already heard that Amy dialled 999 herself, saying: “I’m dying. He’s stabbed me to death...my boyfriend. Please help me...”.

The jury was told Mr Barnes, who runs a motorcycle tyre business in Farnworth, ran back to his van after picking up a key from Amy’s grandmother and set off to meet his daughter He let himself into the terraced house, opened a door from the vestibule to the living room and saw his daughter in a pool of blood.

“Amy was on the floor at the bottom of the stairs,” he said.

He told the prosecutor she had cuts to her face and was lying in the foetal position. Her eyes were half open and she was breathing in a laboured way. He immediately called 999 then ended up speaking to another emergency operator who his daughter had called moments after she was stabbed. Mr Barnes later noticed the back door to the property was open, as well as the backyard gate which led on to an alleyway.

He said he ran out of the house but did not see anyone.

In a statement read to the court, Sgt Andrew Smith said he was the first officer to arrive at the scene.

He saw Amy lying on her side with her head towards the front door. “There was a pool of blood from her abdomen. Her upper body was covered in blood and there was blood on her face.”

He was talking to a shocked Mr Barnes when he heard a “loud bang” from the rear of the address which sounded like a door being shut.

“Mr Barnes said ‘It’s him, it will be him, he might still be in the house’.”

Sgt Smith ran after him and heard him shout ‘Where is he? He’s here, I’ll kill him’.

When the officer asked who was he talking about, Mr Barnes said Ricardo Morrison.

After issuing an alert, the officer searched the house and spotted an empty slot in the kitchen knife block and a blood-stained mobile phone on the window sill.

Under cross-examination from Johannah Cutts, representing Morrison, Mr Barnes agreed that his daughter’s relationship with the defendant was up and down.

He had said “one day she was happy, the next day she said she wanted to separate”.

Amy was annoyed that she could not go out with her friends as much, the court heard.

Amy and Morrison lived with her grandmother, Catherine Barnes, from the end of August last year. In that two-and-a-half months, Mrs Barnes said the couple had arguments but she did not see any physical violence.

She told the court: “When Amy wanted to go out, he would make his discomfort known. I never heard him shouting or lose his temper.

“I never saw Amy with injuries. If I had seen anything, I would not have stood for it. At the end of October, I heard them arguing.

“I heard Amy say that she had given up her job. Amy came downstairs crying and upset and she had a red line down her forehead. When Amy got emotional and upset, she did not normally go red.”

Amy died at 2.40pm despite the efforts of doctors.

Morrison’s mother Wilks, aged 49, of Hollyhill Road, Rubery, who is a police officer in the West Midlands force, denies assisting an offender.

The case continues.