A solicitor was stabbed to death at his home by a man he had sacked seven years earlier, court trold

A solicitor was stabbed to death at his home by a man he had sacked seven years earlier, Winchester Crown Court was told yesterday.

Nigel Lightfoot, 60, a senior partner at a Southampton firm, was attacked after answering a knock at the door of his home in the Bursledon area of the city late one evening. The jury was told that his wife, Susan, was alerted by screams and found her husband covered in blood being pursued by a man who told her: "I'm not going to hurt you. It's your husband, the bastard. He knows who I am. He knows why I am doing this." John Vine, 39, of Thornhill, Southampton, denies murder. He was employed as a clerk by her husband's firm but was dismissed for alleged theft in 1987.