Louise Gardner claimed she had picked up a knife which the other woman, former Handbridge resident Rachel Jones, had dropped, and after losing her self-control stabbed and slashed her with it.

She said Miss Jones, who was half on and half off a bicycle, had had a 'crazy' expression on her face and had been shouting 'come on' and 'one on one'.

"That is when all the madness just happened to me," Gardner, 26, told Liverpool Crown Court.

"She was laughing at me, she was pushing me, I couldn't take any more. She was getting into my head.

"I had all this energy and I just lost control and I could not stop. I could not control what I was doing.

"I remember stabbing her in the upper chest and slashing the knife side to side across her face," said blonde-haired Gardner.

"I kicked her once after I stabbed her. I think she was on the ground. I kicked her to the head or upper body. It was my body, it didn't want to stop. I didn't realise the knife was going into her," she claimed.

Asked by her barrister, Tim Holroyde, QC, if she had wanted to kill Miss Jones or cause her really serious harm, she replied: "No."

Gardner, of Mallow Road, Kensington, Liverpool, has pleaded not guilty to murder.

The jury has heard that the incident followed a six-year feud after Miss Jones fell out with Gardner's sister, Vicky, because she trashed Miss Jones' flat at a party while Miss Jones was out.

The victim's twin, Becky, has told the court her sister admitted to her throwing paint over the Gardner's home and paintstripper over Vicky's car.

Gardner told the court that about two weeks before the fatal incident on March 14 this year, a pool ball had been hurled through the front window of her home, just missing her mother's head.

On March 14 she was in the bath when the window was again smashed and, looking out of the window, she saw a hooded figure on a bike. The person was shouting abuse and laughing and she then saw it was Miss Jones.

She dressed and ran after her and two sisters, who lived next door, followed in their car and said they had seen Miss Jones in nearby Hampstead Road. She got in the car and they drove to the area and when they saw her in Woodville Terrace she got out.

"I thought we were going to have a fight. She had a knife. She had one foot on the ground and was going to get off the bike and the knife fell to the floor. She was shouting and I grabbed the knife," she alleged.

Gardner said after the attack she got back in the car but got out on the way home so the sisters could check if the police were at her home investigating the window smashing. While waiting she sat on a kerb and after wiping the knife with a tissue dropped it down a nearby drain.

The police were not at her home so she went there and changed out of her blood-stained clothes. She put them in a bag and hid them under the stairs at a friend's home without telling her.

Cross-examined by Stuart Driver, QC, prosecuting, she denied she had been angry but in control during the attack and said she had been scared.

She agreed she stabbed her in the chest and then grabbed her by the hair and slashed her across the face.

She said she had intended to hand herself into the police but had not had time to do so by the time the police arrived.

(Proceeding)