Woman on trial in Salzburg on charges of attempted murder
A 37-year-old had to answer to charges of attempted murder in a trial at the Salzburg Regional Court on Tuesday. On October 30, 2021, she is said to have stabbed her partner in the chest and upper arm with a kitchen knife while under the influence of alcohol in a dispute in his apartment in Hallein. The victim was critically injured. The woman said she did not want to fight or attack the man. “I just wanted to scare him.”
According to the prosecutor, there was initially a verbal argument. Then the accused got a knife with a blade length of 20 centimeters from the kitchen and inflicted two stab wounds on her secret partner. The first stab opened the victim’s left chest cavity. “The injury was life-threatening,” the prosecutor said. At the time of the crime, the alcohol-dependent woman had a blood alcohol level of 1.56 per thousand. According to a court report, she was sane.
Dispute over alcohol
The native of Upper Austria described today, sometimes with tears in her eyes, that she was still mourning the death of her fiancé, who died in the summer of 2020, and that she drank alcohol to make her feel indifferent. On October 30, she drank vodka with orange juice, even though her new boyfriend, whom she met online, wanted to help her get off the alcohol. “He was a very nice man.”
The prosecution sparked a dispute about alcohol, the woman wanted to move out. But her boyfriend stopped her, the woman said. Then she took the knife in her hand to scare him. “I wanted the argument to stop. My head was just blank.” He wanted to take the knife away from her, the scramble resulted in the stab wounds.
But she made no forward motion with the knife toward her boyfriend, she told the associate judge, who confronted her with the fact that the thrust must have been severe, as the blade pierced through three layers of the victim’s clothing and then penetrated the victim’s rib cage . However, her friend had testified that the two stab wounds had happened in quick succession. The woman stabbed the upper body with full force, pulled the knife out again and then stabbed the upper left arm.
charge of defamation
The prosecutor extended the charge of defamation during the hearing. The accused allegedly alleged that her partner had been raped in prison in a letter to the detention and legal protection judge and during the police interrogation. Today the woman had stated that this allegation was not true. They were pressured by a cellmate to make these allegations.
In his opening statement, the defense attorney said that the 37-year-old pleaded not guilty to the charge of attempted murder. She deeply regrets her actions. At that time they did not think about the fact that a serious injury could occur, from which the man could die. The defendant was mentally impaired to 50 percent, added the lawyer. The defense attorney recognized EUR 1,641.44 of a total of EUR 3,641.44 that the representative of the private parties demanded for the physical and mental pain suffered and for the deductible for the one-week hospital stay of the victim.
A verdict is likely to be pronounced later today.