By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A Harlem woman on trial for allegedly murdering her husband testified Monday that she did not mean to kill him when she "poked" a butter knife into his chest.
Donna Cobb, 42, said her husband, ex-con Kevin Cobb, was habitually abusive and had choked her in their bedroom on the night of his death, prompting her to reach for the closest thing she could find to defend herself.
"He was choking me with one hand [and] trying to stop me from getting his hands loose from my neck," a tearful Donna Cobb said on the witness stand Monday afternoon.
"As he was choking you, how did you feel?" her lawyer, Earl Ward, asked on direct examination.
"Scared that he was going to kill me," the defendant said, recalling the fatal events of Nov. 11, 2006.
"After I grabbed [the knife], I uh, poked him with it," she said.
Dona Cobb, who originally confessed to police that she'd hit her husband with an elephant-shaped ceramic item, testified at trial that she threw the item at his head and then stabbed him to death.
The defendant, who was working as a nurse's aide at Harlem Hospital while the couple and their children were living in an apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue, is charged with second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter and tampering with evidence.
"I just wanted him to stop choking me," she testified. "I didn't think he was going to die — that wasn't my intention.
"I mean, I love Kevin," she added.
Prosecutors argued that Donna Cobb's story is bogus and said that she killed her husband because she was fed up with his lifestyle.
On cross-examination, prosecutors asked her why she went back to the apartment after she stabbed him.
"You, in your frantic state, suddenly decide to go back and help your husband?" Assistant District Attorney James Lin asked.
Donna Cobb said she saw her husband gripping his chest and tried to apply pressure to his bloody wound in the absence of medical help.
Prosecutors also grilled her on why she waited to call 911 until her mother, who lived nearby, arrived at the scene. He was already dead by the time medical crews arrived, they said.
Cobb faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted of the top charge. Her children are expected to testify later this week.
