Amber Heard’s sister thought she “was going to kill” Johnny Depp during a bust-up, a witness has claimed.
A former employer of Heard’s sister has contradicted evidence given in the High Court in Depp’s libel trial against The Sun newspaper, the Mirror can reveal.
Jennifer Howell said Heard’s sister Whitney Henriquez told her Heard was “extremely violent” and couldn’t understand why Depp “was putting up with Amber’s abuse”.
Howell made the claims in a US libel trial Depp has brought against Heard.
In Depp’s trial against The Sun for calling him a “wife-beater”, Henriquez said that a drunken Depp nearly pushed her down the stairs at his LA home in 2015 when she intervened in a dispute.
She said Heard responded “don’t hit my sister” and hit him.
Henriquez said Depp, 57, “went for Amber”, and “I saw him punch her hard in the head”.
Henriquez said she had to stay on her boss’s floor after the fight. But Howell, who was Henriquez’s employer at the charity The Art of Elysium at the time, disputed this in a sworn declaration statement to a US court, seen by the Mirror.
She said: “Whitney testified about a violent incident in 2015. Whitney said she had to go live with her employer, where she had to sleep on their floor. I am that employer. This is not what I was told to be true. Whitney came to live in the guest room, not on my floor. Whitney told me she tried to stop Amber from attacking Johnny.
“Whitney said when she tried to intervene, Amber nearly pushed Whitney down the stairs. She told me she was worried Amber ‘was going to kill Johnny’.”
Last night, Henriquez said: “This is complete fiction. Jennifer Howell’s statements do not bear any relationship to the truth and I have no idea why she is saying this.
A source close to Heard also claimed Howell gave a character reference in 2016 where she stated: “Amber is a walking example of selflessness and giving.” Yesterday, Heard, 34, said it had been “incredibly painful to relive the break-up of my relationship [and have] the most traumatic details of my life shared in court.”