A MAN was stabbed to death in a row about a dog, a court heard.

David Greenall, 48, died from a 10cm deep stab wound to his liver after being attacked outside his home in Broad Close, Ormsgill, Barrow, on June 12 2020.

William Adrian Hughes, 63, is accused of inflicting the fatal wound after the men argued about dogs using the communal area behind the flats.

One witness, a woman who lived at the flats in Broad Close at the time of the killing, said she heard shouting and went outside to see what was going on.

As she listened in the stairwell she said she heard a man who lived upstairs say he was calling the police.

She heard another man, who she thought also lived at the flats, say: “Ring the police, you’ve just stabbed him.”

The court heard a 999 call made by Hughes, who told the operator: “The guy downstairs said I shouldn’t be having my dogs out in the back communal area. Another guy’s come from behind and I’ve hit him….

“He punched me in the face and he started telling me what I should and shouldn’t be doing...

“He’s hit me so I hit him back. It turned into a wrestling match basically. These other guys grabbed me from behind.

“I’m 63. I can’t fight my way out of a paper bag now.”

Police and paramedics rushed to the scene and found Mr Greenall seriously injured.

He was taken to Furness General Hospital but died a short time later.

A post mortem examination found he suffered a deep knife wound to his abdomen which had penetrated his liver.

Mr Nelson, a friend of Mr Hughes, told the court that days before the attack he had seen his friend of 30 years carrying a grey fold knife.

Mr Nelson said he had pulled the knife out to show him but he had asked him to put it away as it made him nervous.

He said: “I told him not to do anything hasty because Mr Hughes in my opinion was not in his right frame of mind.”

Later that week Mr Nelson took some laundry to Hughes’ flat, but on Saturday morning a neighbour told him Hughes had been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Hughes denies the charge.