A man who stabbed to death a British woman after her home was broken into in Australia has been acquitted.

Emma Lovell, 41, was killed while fending off two intruders in Queensland’s North Lakes on Boxing Day 2022.

The mother died from a single stab wound to the heart, and another man, who was not named because he was under 18 at the time of the attack, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty to murder in May.

A second man, who was 17 at the time of the attack and cannot be named, appeared in the Brisbane Supreme Court last week.

Judge Michael Copley, who heard the case without a jury, found the man not guilty on Thursday of murder as well as a malicious act involving intentional and unlawful wounding.

He found the defendant guilty of theft and assault.

“I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant was complicit in this murder,” the judge said.

Ms Lovell emigrated to Australia from Suffolk in 2011 with her husband Lee, who survived the attack, and their two daughters.

In sentencing statements at the first hearing, Judge Tom Sullivan said Ms Lovell was described as “an energetic and beloved mother, wife, daughter and sister”.

The court heard the couple tried to fend off the intruders after they were woken by their dog barking at around 11.30pm.

Mr Lovell was injured during a “physical struggle just outside the front door” and was later moved to the front garden where his wife was fatally stabbed.

Although the defendant was found guilty of theft, he was cleared of the aggravating circumstances of possessing an offensive weapon.

According to the verdict, the prosecution claimed that the defendant “had knowledge that his accomplice was carrying a knife at the time of the crimes.”

However, Judge Copley said he could not be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant knew his accomplice “H” was armed with a knife.

The judge also found that he could not be certain to the criminal standard that the man was neither a “party to this murder” nor a party who unlawfully injured Mr Lovell or committed a willfully malicious act.

The defendant was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company after the judge was satisfied that he was on the lawn when “H” attacked Mr Lovell “with the intention of physically participating in the attack if necessary”.