What the witness described on Wednesday in front of the district court sounds like a nightmare: One evening in February 2022, the 44-year-old woman comes home late from a friend. In front of her house, she notices an unknown man and initially believes it to be a neighbor. In the stairwell, she notices that the man is following her, she gets an uneasy feeling and accelerates her steps.
When she wants to close the apartment door behind her, he forcibly presses against it, takes the key from her and locks the front door from the inside. He offers her money, she doesn't know why. When she refuses, he wants her smartphone and threatens to kill her if she doesn't. He tries to call someone, takes off his shoes and looks through the peephole several times.
Then he takes two knives from the kitchen and holds them to her neck and upper lip with the words "Say bye-bye". Suddenly, she finds herself on the ground, how, she doesn't know. He stabs her head from above and bites her eyebrow. Somehow she manages to get her spare key and escapes from the apartment. Witnesses who see her on the street call the police. The woman comes to the hospital, where a knife tip has to be surgically removed from her nose and several wounds have to be stitched.
Connected from another hall
More than a year later, the crime still has consequences for the woman. According to a psychotherapist's certificate, which is read out in court, she has been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder ever since. She herself reports sleep and anxiety disorders. She can't go out in the dark and is afraid when she sees strangers on the street. In addition, she could no longer cover longer distances on her own. She had not been able to enter her apartment for a month and a half after the crime and lived with an acquaintance in Bad Homburg. It was only after friends had tidied up and renovated her apartment that she was able to move back in. So that she does not have to sit opposite the alleged perpetrator, she is connected to her testimony by video from another courtroom.
The man has been charged with attempted murder, deprivation of liberty and dangerous bodily injury since Wednesday. The prosecution assumes that the twenty-seven-year-old was considerably less culpable at the time of the crime. He is said to have come to Frankfurt to go shopping, to have celebrated in the station district the evening before the crime and to have consumed alcohol and cocaine until the morning of the following day. As a result, he is said to have been in a psychotic state during the crime, according to the indictment.
A detective also reports on the conspicuous behavior of the accused. After the arrest, he allegedly said that they had tried to kill him and claimed that the woman had been wearing microphones. In addition, he had said that he had been offered pills, which he had voluntarily consumed.
The Chamber must now clarify whether the defendant's ability to control was completely suspended at the time of the offence and whether there was therefore an incapacity to act. If this is the case, a conviction for intoxication would be possible. The trial is tentatively scheduled until the end of June. It will continue on Tuesday.