Tamworth man Jesse Leigh Green has been charged with the murder of the 22-year-old mother in her Robert Street home on March 28, 2018; and is also facing charges of break and enter; and using an offensive weapon.

The accused is facing a special judge-alone hearing in the NSW Supreme Court and the Crown called witness Tanya O'Toole to the stand on Wednesday to give evidence in Tamworth.

The court heard Ms O'Toole lived in Robert Street at the time Ms Luckwell was murdered, and said she was woken just after 4am when her ceiling fan slowed down on March 28, 2018.

READ ALSO:

She gave evidence she went outside to check her power box twice, to find switches had been flicked off.

"[I] thought it was very strange, [I] felt very uncomfortable," she told the court.

After being unable to go back to sleep because she felt like someone was hanging around, Ms O'Toole said she looked out her window and saw a man standing in her driveway.

She claimed she alerted her partner and headed towards the front door and opened it, expecting the man had been scared off.

"He was actually coming forwards, towards my front porch," Ms O'Toole said.

"He launched from probably the bottom of the steps onto the porch ... with a weapon of some sort in his hand."

She gave evidence they slammed the wooden door and locked it, before she heard the "impact of the weapon on the door".

"The screen on the door was actually cut like a knife would slice it, it was ripped and sliced," she told the court.

"Later we noticed that there was, like, a stab mark in the wooden door which wasn't there before."

Ms O'Toole gave evidence her partner chased the man down the street before he said the man disappeared into a block of flats on Robert Street.

She said she didn't report it to the police at the time, but when police started asking questions in the days after Ms Luckwell was found stabbed to death inside the front door of her home, she told them what had happened.

She gave evidence there was "a lot of thieving going around" in the area at the time.

Crown prosecutor Brian Costello previously told the court in his opening address on Monday that Green had both a "state of mind" and a "tendency" to try and enter premises he knew or thought might be occupied.

Several Crown witnesses were called to give evidence in the special hearing on Wednesday, and were cross-examined by public defender Stuart Bouveng.

Ms Luckwell was found in a pool of her own blood several hours after her death three years ago, after suffering stab wounds to her upper neck and back.

The hearing continues.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: