ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Melanie Engleman testifies on the witness stand Wednesday about the fatal stabbing of 19-year-old William Christopher Linn last year. With her is her attorney, Chris Kowalczuk.

Melanie Elaine Engleman sat straight-backed behind the witness stand and spoke calmly and articulately as she described the circumstances that led her to fatally stab her ex-boyfriend in June.

The 17-year-old's demeanor before the Roanoke jury trying her case made for a sharp contrast to the portrait painted in previous court testimony of a foul-mouthed young girl enraged by jealousy.

The defense's strategy began to take shape in the second day of Engleman's trial for first-degree murder in the killing of 19-year-old William Christopher Linn.

Engleman stuck to her claim under cross-examination that she struck Linn with a steak knife only after he abruptly attacked her -- and afterward, her defense attorney called witness after witness to bolster her assertions that Linn was hot-tempered and capable of sudden violence.

The stabbing happened June 2 after Engleman and two friends went to the Vinton home of Tai Reid, another teenage girl whom Linn was seeing at the same time he was seeing Engleman.

Linn left Reid's house out the back door when Engleman and her friends arrived, but according to evidence, he then came around the house and confronted them.

Engleman and Linn went together to a gravel parking lot on a nearby Roanoke road, where the stabbing happened.

Engleman, the only living witness to the stabbing, told her version of events to the jury Wednesday. She said she and Reid had cursed each other over the phone after she learned Linn was at Reid's house.

Reid testified in court Tuesday that while they were speaking on the phone Engleman threatened to slit her throat. Engleman said Wednesday she never made such a statement.

When the phone confrontations continued, Engleman decided to go to Reid's house. "I figured if I went and fought her they would stop," she said.

A friend and another girl picked her up at her mother's house in Northwest Roanoke. She called Reid and told her, "Bitch, I'm on the way."

Along the way, Engleman asked to stop at a grocery store. She went inside and stole a steak knife.

Engleman said she got the knife for her protection. She knew Linn was at the house, she said. "He had done some pretty horrible things to me before," she said. "I didn't know what would happen."

Encouraged by her defense attorney, Chris Kowalczuk, Engleman detailed about a dozen incidents in which she said Linn had threatened her, punched her or grabbed her by her throat, and even an instance in which she said he forced himself on her sexually. She said Linn became violent when he abused drugs.

She said that as she and the other two girls were leaving Reid's house, Linn asked her to come talk to him alone.

She walked with him to a gravel lot and they started to argue. Then he grabbed her in a headlock, told her he was going to kill her and started hitting her. "I thought, this time he is going to kill me. And so I just jerked up my arm and I stabbed him to get him off me," Engleman said, her voice becoming emotional.

Kowalczuk had her stand up and together they demonstrated to the jury how she was gripped in the headlock and how she stabbed with the knife.

Kowalczuk asked Engleman why, if Linn was so abusive, she would want to continue to be in a relationship with him.

"I guess I felt like I was the one who was doing something wrong," she said, adding that she believed she could change him. "I still love him and I will never stop loving him."

Under cross-examination by Roanoke prosecutor Alice Ekirch, Engleman said she had the knife in her hand from the moment she arrived at Reid's house.

Ekirch expressed open skepticism about many aspects of Engleman's story, highlighting that the girl lied about her identity when she made a 911 call about the stabbing, then went to a friend's house and picked up marijuana.

Kowalczuk called several employees at Roanoke Valley Juvenile Detention Center in Coyner Springs and at nearby Sanctuary, a youth crisis intervention center.

Collectively, they described an April 16 incident in which Linn showed up first at Sanctuary looking for Engleman, then went to the detention center and showed employees there that he had a gun.

According to testimony, he spoke to the employees at both places, many of whom he knew personally, in a relaxed and joking manner. But one of the Sanctuary employees became alarmed because he said he was looking for Engleman, who he said had run from him, and that when he found her he was going to kill her.

As a result of the incident, Linn wound up with a conviction and suspended sentence for brandishing a firearm in Botetourt County.

Engleman's trial is expected to conclude today.