Laurence Dollimore
A SWIMWEAR model accused of murdering her British ex-boyfriend in Estepona has admitted fleeing the scene after shooting him.
Mayka Marica Kukucova, 26, is accused of shooting 48-year-old Andrew Bush on April 5, 2014, a month after they broke up.
It is alleged the Slovakian shot Mr Bush once in the shoulder and twice in the head after he arrived home with his new Russian girlfriend, Maria Korotaeva.
But she insists the gold dealer confronted her with a gun, and that it went off after the two struggled.
“He started shouting and hitting me and took me strongly by the arms. I said I wanted to go but he said no. He was shouting that he was going to kill me and my family,” she told the jury in Malaga.
They then struggled on the stairs, she claimed.
“Then the gun was in my hands. I threw myself on him and we were fighting and then the gun went off. I couldn’t hear anything. I was just trying to get away. I didn’t want to hurt him.”
Mr Bush owned a jewellery store in Bristol in the UK before moving to Spain, earning the nickname Mr Bling.
He had been been dating Kukucova for two and a half years before they broke up.
She alleges she was collecting her things when he unexpectedly arrived home with his new girlfriend Korotaeva.
Kukucova claims Mr Bush told Korotaeva to wait in his hummer car before he confronted her.
His body was found the next morning lying in a pool of blood with the gun in his left hand.
Prosecutors allege Kukucova placed it there to deter suspicion.
She said in court she did not know how it got there.
Following the shooting, the former model drove off in the Hummer but handed herself in in Slovakia four days later.
Asked why she didn´t go straight to Spanish police she told the court:
“I didn’t know he was seriously injured, let alone dead.
“I was worried he would send his friends or workers to come and get me. I was terrified something bad would happen.”
Kukucova could not explain why his body was found far from the stairs by a column when she had testified that their last struggle was on the stairs.
Her lawyer, Carlos Larranga told the court: “My client shot Mr Bush,” before insisting that being a killer does not make you a murderer.
The trial continues.
