A woman from Nîmes, heavily intoxicated, stabs the man in the head when he tries to help her

La femme de 38 ans a porté des coups de couteau au niveau du crâne de son sauveur. Illustration Midi Libre – JEAN-CHRISTOPHE SANNICOLAS

La prévenue, qui comparaissait ce mercredi 15 janvier devant le tribunal correctionnel de Nîmes, explique n’avoir aucun souvenir de cette attaque au couteau.

“When I arrived in police custody, I saw that I had blood on me and that it wasn't mine. I understood that I had done something serious”, admits Jeanine, in an accent marked by her German origins. This Wednesday, January 15, in the dock of the Nîmes criminal court, this 38-year-old from Nîmes is agitated. “I know that when I drink, I do strange things”, she admits. “weird” things that could have, in this case, cost a person their life.

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Stab wounds to the skull

On January 12, around 5 p.m., while she was completely drunk in the street in Nîmes, drinking from a bottle of rum, Roger*, an acquaintance of Jeanine, decided to take her back to her partner's house. Once at his place, the two men exchanged a few words until the defendant tried to jump out of the window of her partner's home. Reacting quickly, Roger caught up with her. But instead of thanking him, Jeanine armed herself with a butcher's knife and stabbed him several times in the head. He got off with three days of temporary incapacity for work. “If we have to be satisfied with something, it is that this case is brought to the criminal court and not to the assizes”, underlines Me Carmelo Vialette, lawyer for the civil party, who highlights the knife used by the defendant “which is nothing like an Opinel”, he insists.

“It's very bad, I could have killed him”

Jeanine, for her part, says she doesn't remember anything about this attack. “He just wanted to help me, I don't understand why I did that. It's very bad, I could have killed him”, she explains. Her psychiatric assessment highlights a major problem with alcohol. An addiction that she recognizes. “You say that your two-month treatment in 2023 worked well, clearly that's not the case”, raises Antoine Giuntini, president of the court. On the day of the incident, her blood alcohol level was 3.50 g of alcohol. She has also already been convicted by the courts for drunk driving and insulting persons in authority between 2019 and 2023.

Sentenced to eighteen months in prison

Adelaïde Galtier, the court prosecutor, requests that the impairment of judgment specified by the psychiatric expert not be retained in this case. She requests 30 months in prison and the revocation of her six-month suspended sentence, bringing the sentence to 36 months in prison, including one year of suspended probation, with a requirement for treatment, a ban on possessing a weapon and continued detention. A request that is not adapted to the defendant's condition according to Me Salomé Auliard, her lawyer. “Today, detention is not a solution. Treatment, that's the only thing that can help her”, she pleads. An argument that does not convince the court, which revokes Jeanine's suspended sentence and sentences her to a total of eighteen months in prison, and six months of suspended probation, with obligations of care, work and compensation to the victim.

*The first name has been changed. I subscribe to read the rest