The daughter of Gary McMillan has recalled the moment she came face to face with her knife-wielding father after he mistook her for his alleged killer.
Brogan McMillan was giving evidence at the trial of Arran Fender at the High Court in Edinburgh.
Fender, 31, is accused of murdering Mr McMillan, 44, in the early hours of May 16 last year at the junction of Lawton Road and Lawton Terrace. Fender denies the charges, claiming self-defence.
Ms McMillan broke down in tears a during her evidence.
She spoke of her father’s friendship with Fender, with the two having previously been friends “all her life”.
She told the court: “Arran used to come up to my dad’s. He would have done anything for Arran.”
Their friendship soured months before Mr McMillan’s death, after he told a relative of Jill Halliday — the mother of Fender’s child — that Fender was having a relationship with another woman, Jessica Holt.
Ms McMillan, 23, said that about three months before her father’s death, he had to flee his own house after Fender pulled out a knife and threatened him.
She said: “I got a phone call from my dad that night, that Arran had pulled a knife out to him.”
Advocate depute Murdo McTaggart, prosecuting, asked Ms McMillan why he had to leave the house, to which she replied: “Because he was scared of knives.”
She was asked how her father was when he told her about this, to which she replied: “Obviously not happy, because he had been stabbed before and he hated knives, and Arran was well aware of that.”
Ms McMillan went on to discuss the last time she saw her father, on May 15, hours before his death.
He was in his house in Lawton Terrace with Ms Holt, 22, drinking and taking cocaine and speed.
She said when she arrived at her father’s house on May 15, she rang the buzzer at the main entrance to the block of flats and then walked in, as the door was already open.
When she got up the stairs she said her father, who thought she was Fender, rushed out of his flat holding a knife.
She said: “He hadn’t slept for about two weeks. He was uptight and scared.
“I said, ‘what the hell?’, and my dad said, ‘don’t do that to (me)’.
“He told me he didn’t want me to be there. He said there was going to be trouble.”
When asked if her father would ever have used a knife himself, she said: “My dad would never carry a knife, he hated them.”
She went on to say her dad had met Fender earlier that day at Lochee Park “for a square-go”.
“Arran was over at a fence, it was about football training time and all the kids were doing football training at Lochee Park, and Arran had a knife,” she told the court.
Her father, who said he armed himself with a bat “for protection” had turned around when he saw Fender was carrying a knife.
He told her Fender said to him: “You’ve taken my family away.”
Fender denies inflicting blunt force trauma to Mr McMillan and repeatedly striking him on the body with a knife or similar instrument on May 16.
He also denies attempting to pervert the course of justice by giving his mother clothes and footwear and asking her to dispose of them. He further denies possessing a knife on May 15 and threatening Mr McMillan with a knife between February 1 and March 31.
The trial continues.
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