A teenager who denies murdering a 30-year-old former scaffolder told police in interviews he was "not thinking at all" at the time of the incident. John Cumby was stabbed through the heart after a prank involving an egg that hit the youth's house at Yarmouth.

A teenager who denies murdering a 30-year-old former scaffolder told police in interviews he was "not thinking at all" at the time of the incident.

John Cumby was stabbed through the heart after a prank involving an egg that hit the youth's house at Yarmouth.

The jury at Norwich Crown Court yesterday heard tapes of four interviews with the youth, who is now 16. Asked what he was thinking at the time of the stabbing, he said: "I was not thinking at all. I was really upset.

"After all, my mum suffers with nerves and she's been to the doctor multiple times about it and the various pills and stuff.

"All I can remember is it felt like a black and white sort of thing - sort of like distress for seeing my brother hurt and my mum being upset. This was my breaking limit."

The youth added that Mr Cumby, of Byron Road Yarmouth, had pushed his brother and had then scratched his cheek. Then he realised he still had the knife in his pocket which he used to model soldiers and stabbed him.

"I was full of grief and I was upset and angry. I don't know what it was, whether it was stress or something. I just blanked out.

"I did not have any control over what I was doing. I had enough of living in that house, getting all the grief, getting bullied and tormented. You don't know when the next bad thing is going to happen."

Earlier in the week the court heard that Mr Cumby, who was with two boys aged 10 and 15 at the time, had tried to see if he could wrap a real egg in a Creme Egg wrapper.

When he failed, he tried to see if he could throw the egg so it cleared the roof of a nearby house. Instead, it smashed against a bathroom window of the home where the defendant lived with his family last February.

The case continues.