David McArthur died at the Palm Beach Caravan Park in Sanctuary Point after being stabbed once in the chest around 8pm on July 25, 2021.
His killer Raymond Allen is now on trial for murder in the Supreme Court after admitting that he stabbed the 48-year-old during a robbery for drugs and/or money.
On Monday, defence barrister Gabriel Wendler told the jury the knifing was in self-defence.
Mr McArthur used and sold methamphetamine out of his cabin, including to one of Allen's friends who was in debt to his girlfriend.
The pair sketched out the robbery to repay this money with Allen also texting a friend that he "needed the coin badly".
They drove with a third man from where they lived in Nowra to the caravan park.
CCTV footage shows Allen, who was shirtless at the time, walking with his friend towards the cabin minutes before the alleged murder.
The third man waited back in the ute with the lights turned off.
Planning to cut the power to Mr McArthur's unit to lure him out, Allen's accomplice accidentally switched off the electricity to a neighbour's cabin, the jury heard.
That neighbour Hailey Morgan was on the phone at the time when she heard banging and yelling from outside and saw the army veteran at his kitchen window.
"I've been stabbed. I need help," he allegedly said.
She phoned triple zero and had to force herself into Mr McArthur's cabin as a dishwasher had been wedged up against the door, blocking entry.
"She saw David holding his chest and looking very pale, so a lot of blood on the floor, the kitchen bench," the crown prosecutor told the jury.
"(Ms Morgan) described David as gurgling and losing consciousness."
In a recording from a frantic triple-zero call played to the jury, Ms Morgan and another man are instructed to give CPR and place pressure on the wound until police and paramedics arrive.
"There's blood everywhere," Ms Morgan tells the operator.
Paramedics announced Mr McArthur dead at the scene.
While a combination safe was found open in his unit, police also found a gold watch and $485 in cash in the deceased's pockets.
After fleeing the site of the stabbing, Allen allegedly told his accomplices that he had "fixed up" a pedophile.
"He's raped her," he's heard yelling on the CCTV footage as he runs through the caravan park.
After his arrest, Allen was heard telling his sister in a recorded phone call that this was a lie he had made up.
Returning to his Nowra home on the day of the stabbing, he allegedly asked his uncle if he wanted to see "something funny" and then showed him the blood-stained knife.
"I stabbed a guy in the throat. He squealed like a pig so I ran," he's alleged to have said.
Police later found the knife with the blade snapped off thrown into a stormwater drain.
The trial before Justice Des Fagan continues on Tuesday in Wollongong.
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