The 5-foot-tall woman with gray hair and reading glasses perched on her head told the jury that when she went to the Monument Avenue residence, which was the home of Ross’ sister, Ross had already had “more than one drink.”
“Well, she (Ross) was not the best person to be around when she was intoxicated. She would get loud on you and very aggressive,” Jackson said.
Ross was cursing at her sister, and Jackson said she told her not to be disrespectful.
“Across the table she came and dove on me,” Jackson said. “It was like slow motion, but when she came at me, it was like boom, and took me down. I hit the ground.”
Jackson said she when to the residence with the open folding knife on her fanny pack. She said as a woman living alone, she often carried the knife open when she walked at night.
She tried to get the knife out of the way after she was pushed to the ground, Jackson said.
“I was on the ground, I knew the knife was on top of the fanny pack. I was trying to make sure it didn’t injure me or Diana,” Jackson said.
Jackson chock back tears when her defense attorney, David Brewer, asked her where the knife landed.
“It went in Diana’s body,” she said, adding when others pulled Diana off her, she saw the knife hanging on Diana’s body.
Jackson said she took the knife and ran home. She said she cleaned off the knife and put it in a drawer, changed her bloody shirt and put a smaller “fake” knife on the porch for police to find.
During cross examination, Assistant Prosecutor Brad Burress asked Jackson if she grabbed the knife after being pushed from the chair by Ross.
“Evidently it was in my hand. I do not know. I was trying to get her off of me,” she said, adding that about two weeks after the incident she began to experience memory loss, possibly from her head hitting the concrete.
In a police interrogation tape played for the jury Tuesday, Jackson told a different version of Ross’ death.
“She came around the table and the next thing I know, I am on the ground and she is hitting, beating on me,” Jackson said to Hamilton detectives just hours after the stabbing.
In the interrogation tape, Jackson said she reached into her fanny pack and “come up on” Ross with a knife.
“She had me on the ground, kicking me, beating me,” Jackson said. “The only way I could get off the ground was to come up with a knife.”
The trial continues Thursday afternoon in Butler County Common Pleas Judge Keith Spaeth’s courtroom with closing arguments. Then, jury deliberations will begin.
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