THE man who suffered fatal stab wounds after a dispute with a neighbour at a block of flats in Poole told police 'I went to sort it out being polite and next thing I know he ******* stabbed me', a court heard.

The trial of Christopher Stocks, 54, of Rossmore Road, accused of murdering Gary Ballett in August last year, resumed at Salisbury Crown Court on Wednesday.

Mr Ballett was stabbed in his abdomen at Trinidad House on August 9 and died the next day.

Jurors heard how while receiving treatment in an ambulance, Mr Ballett told PC Alexandra Kimmins: “We came back from the pub, all our chairs were kicked around.

“I wanted to come up and sort it out. I went up being polite and next thing I know he ******* stabbed me.”

Prosecutors said the evening before, August 8, an altercation occurred when Stocks told a group, including Mr Ballett, to turn their music off.

Barry Tucker, one of the members of the group, told the court: “The radio was on low, Mr Stocks was screaming out his window saying, ‘turn that noise down’.

“He said, ‘I will come down and slit your throats and shoot you’.”

A number of 999 calls were made that evening, including from Stocks and Mr Tucker.

Stocks told police he was “frightened” after Mr Tucker threatened to “smack” his door in.

The following day, Mr Ballett, Mr Tucker, Patrick Bright and Theresa McLennan had been out in the evening at the Victoria Cross pub.

The jury was told that when they returned, they noticed the furniture they would use in the garden had been “kicked about”, they assumed it was Stocks who had done this.

The court heard how Mr Ballett decided to confront Stocks about this.

Mr Bright said: “He was in there for two to three minutes. I heard somebody shouted.

“I don’t know what it was that they shouted but somebody shouted.

“I noticed Mr Ballett was half way down the stairs and there was blood on his t-shirt.”

Mr Bright helped Mr Ballett outside and into the recovery position and waited for the emergency services to arrive.

One of the first emergency workers to arrive was PC Kimmins.

Giving evidence in court, she said: “I saw a male lying on the ground, I noticed a wound to the left of the ribs.

“He kept repeating ‘I am going to kill him’. I was trying to establish details about what had gone on. I asked how he had been injured, he said it was a knife.

“I tried to establish in the ambulance again what the weapon looked like. I asked about the knife and he said it was about six or seven inches, I asked what the colour of the handle was and he didn’t know.”

Stocks claims he did not mean to stab Mr Ballett, and wanted to “scare him away” when the complainant "entered his flat with a “big bat”.

He denies murder. The trial continues.