ANGRY and out for revenge after being called names by a stranger 12 hours earlier, Jacob Bell armed himself with a knife and marched over the road to a house at Windale on the afternoon of Good Friday 2024.
Bell, now 23, had been the aggressor in two earlier confrontations with people at the house in the narrow powder keg of Kankool Way.
And when he armed himself with a blade and refused repeated requests to leave and dismissed demands to "f--- off", Bell was being the aggressor again.
This time though, things became physical and Bell stabbed an unarmed man, Eddy Lemalama, in the back and then in the left side of the chest, according to some witnesses while the 40-year-old was being dragged back inside the house.
Mr Lemalama was rushed to hospital, but died that night.
Bell had pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty to manslaughter, admitting to stabbing Mr Lemalama, but claiming he was acting in self-defence and arguing he did not intend to kill him or cause him grievous bodily harm.
He claimed Mr Lemalama had come outside the house and punched him, the pair had struggled before he "won the race" to a knife on the ground and "lashed out".
But on Tuesday afternoon, after deliberating for about three days on and off since last week, a jury rejected Bell's claims and found him guilty of murder.
Bell was not out to make peace, as he had suggested, when he appeared suddenly in the front yard and then would not leave.
And he didn't want to "sort it out" when he walked up to the front door and indicated to those at the home that he had something on his hip.
He wanted a confrontation, knew it could turn violent and had armed himself.
And even after he had stabbed Mr Lemalama he tried to force his way in through the front door to continue what he had started.
As Crown prosecutor Brendan Queenan had put to the jury during his closing address: "This was retribution, it was payback, it was anger".
"There was simply no self-defence."
Bell remains behind bars and will be sentenced in October.
Bell and Mr Lemalama did not know each other and Bell had first come into contact with Mr Lemalama's mate only about two weeks before the fatal stabbing.
Bell was sitting outside an 18th birthday when Mr Lemalama's mate arrived to pick up his daughter.
The pair argued, there was a confrontation, but no violence and Bell punched the other man's passenger side window as he drove off.
Then about 3am on March 29, Bell and a number of other people approached the house Mr Lemalama and his mate were living at on the other side of Kankool Way.
Someone in Bell's group had confronted a woman from Mr Lemalama's house with a knife and the two groups yelled back and forth and made threats.
Importantly, witnesses said Mr Lemalama called Bell a number of names, including a "boneyard dog", prompting Bell's mates to laugh at him.
"He was humiliated," Mr Queenan said.
Bell stewed over it for 12 hours, before he decided to be the aggressor again.
"It had been building up... and in that context, the heated environment and animosity, he went over to the house," Mr Queenan said.
"He was aware that it was a volatile situation, and that is why, he took a knife with him.
"He was prepared for it to become physical.
"He did not go there to make peace, he went there to sort it out, to bring it to a head.
"And that is why he took a knife, because he expected it to get violent."
Mr Queenan had told the jury that even on Bell's version of what happened, the stabbing was a "pre-emptive strike" and after picking up the knife during a fight, Bell could have retreated or thrown it away.
"But instead what does he do?" Mr Queenan said.
"He stabs Eddy. Not once, but twice."
Mr Queenan urged the jury to find that after stabbing Mr Lemalama during the fight, Bell dropped the knife and then picked it up before stabbing him a second time.
The exact sequence of events is unclear.
But the jury were left with no doubt that Bell was again the aggressor, that he was not acting in self-defence and when he stabbed Mr Lemalama, an unarmed man, in the chest, that he was intending to kill him or cause him grievous bodily harm.
