A Suffolk County prosecutor today told Superior Court jurors to “put aside any inclination towards sympathy” for the elderly defendant or and victim of a 2009 stabbing and to “be impartial and follow the evidence where it leads you – no more no less.”

VERNA SEWELL (D.O.B. 12/21/44) is charged with second-degree murder for the May 8, 2009, stabbing of 74-year-old Julius Scott in his Dorchester residence. Evidence suggests that Sewell had been living in Scott’s Talbot Street studio apartment for several months before the stabbing.

“Julius Scott lived almost three-quarters of a century,” Assistant District Attorney Ian Polumbaum said during his opening statement. “Somebody stopped him at 74. Somebody murdered him. Somebody left him in his apartment with a knife in his chest, left him to call 911 on his own, left him to sit in a chair in front of his television to wait for help that came too late.”

Polumbaum told the court that Scott was born in Panama in 1934 and came to the United States in the 1980s. He worked as a cook and as a handyman before taking a job at a bed and breakfast in Brookline, where he had been employed for about seven years up until the time of his death.

It was in late 2008 to early 2009, Polumbaum told jurors, that the victim “became involved with Verna Sewell, the defendant before you; the woman who would eventually kill him.”

Polumbaum told the court that Scott had helped Sewell obtain part-time employment at the bed and breakfast, where she was paid to clean one to two days a week. On May 8, Sewell was scheduled to work at the bed and breakfast, but called the manager to tell her she would not be coming in that day.

“The defendant never went to that job again, and Julius Scott never went to that job again,” Polumbaum said. Instead, at about 7:00 that evening, Scott called 911 to report that he had been stabbed.

When a Boston EMS employee who took the 911 call asked him where the person who had stabbed him had gone, Scott reportedly responded, “She left.”

Shortly after making the emergency call, Scott lost consciousness.

Polumbaum told jurors that when Boston Police officers first arrived on the scene, “there were no signs of a struggle,” but that “in the rush to save Mr. Scott’s life,” first responders knocked down a curtain rod and a lamp and pushed or kicked a pile of clothing that was on the floor into a pool of blood in the area of the kitchenette.

Despite their efforts, however, Scott succumbed to fatal injuries as a result of a single stab wound to the chest.

“The medical examiner will explain to you what damage that one innocuous-looking stab wound did to Mr. Scott’s body,” Polumbaum said. The wound penetrated three inches into Scott’s chest in a downward direction, slicing the subclavian artery under his collarbone, and piercing one of his lungs – both life-threatening injuries, the prosecutor told the court.

Boston Police homicide detectives obtained a search warrant for Scott’s first-floor studio apartment and also got a description of the woman who had been living with him.

Polumbaum said that, at about 2:00 a.m., a detective took a break from processing the crime scene and walked up the street. The detective saw a woman matching the suspect’s description sitting in a nearby bus shelter with blood in her hair and on her clothes. That woman was later identified as the defendant.

When the detective asked her what she was doing, the prosecutor said, Sewell allegedly responded that she was waiting for a bus, and returned the inquiry. The detective told her that he was investigating an incident up the street.

Polumbaum told the court that the defendant made some statements to the detective that “the man” had hit with a brick, that there had been a struggle over a knife, and there was a lot of blood.

Sewell agreed to accompany the detective to police headquarters where she was interviewed and evidence was gathered, including the bloody clothing she was wearing. The blood on her sweater and jacket was subsequently tested and was found to match the victim’s DNA profile, Polumbaum said.

Sewell was also sent for a medical examination and examined by a doctor at a local hospital, where she was found to have a small superficial abrasion on the right side of her head. “There was no bleeding at the time, no other cuts, no bruises, no swelling, no other signs of trauma anywhere on the defendant’s body,” Polumbaum said.

Polumbaum told the court that Sewell told the doctor treating her that the victim was “waiving a knife around” and that he “fell on the knife and died.”

“You will find from the evidence that Mr. Scott didn’t fall on the knife; Ms. Sewell, during this incident, was not hit with a brick, it wasn’t an accident,” Polumbaum said. “There was no other legal justification or excuse for this killing.”

Catherine Rodriguez is the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. Sewell is represented by attorney Aviva Jeruchim. Judge Frank Gaziano is presiding in courtroom 906 of the Suffolk Superior Court.