A MAN accused of carrying out a ‘near fatal’ attack on a woman in the bedroom of their St Helier flat has said he intended only to ‘scare’ her when he entered the room armed with a meat cleaver and a kitchen knife.
Giving evidence on the third day of his Royal Court trial, Luis Abreu Dos Santos, who has admitted grave and criminal assault but pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, denied trying to kill his former partner when he confronted her in October.
Crown Advocate Matthew Maletroit, prosecuting, told the court Mr Dos Santos had been living with the woman, but that their relationship was ‘strained’ and subject to frequent arguments. He said the defendant had ‘descended into a jealous rage’ and ‘brutally attacked’ the victim after discovering intimate messages between her and another man.
Speaking via a translator yesterday morning, Mr Dos Santos answered questions from Advocate Maletroit, as well as Advocate Mark Boothman, defending.
The 48-year-old said he had become suspicious that the victim was in a relationship, and admitted gaining access to her private phone messages indicating she thought she might be pregnant with someone else’s child.
Advocate Maletroit asked the defendant how he had felt when he realised his former partner had been in a secret sexual relationship.
Mr Dos Santos said: ‘It broke my heart.’
Advocate Boothman asked his client what he had intended to do with the knives – a meat cleaver and kitchen knife shown to the court – which he took with him from the kitchen to the bedroom after making a coffee.
Mr Dos Santos said: ‘I just wanted to scare her.’
Advocate Maletroit said that the incident – which left the victim with numerous injuries including a wound to her neck – was a deliberate attempt by Mr Dos Santos to murder his former partner, which had abated only once she pretended to be dead.
‘When he walked into the bedroom armed with a meat cleaver and a kitchen knife he was not thinking of the consequences of what he was about to do,’ Advocate Maletroit told the court.
But Mr Dos Santos said the woman had sustained the injuries only after they got into a verbal and physical fight, saying she indirectly suffered the majority of her injuries during the struggle.
He did, however, admit to hitting her in the face with the back of the cleaver during the incident, so that she would stop screaming.
Summing up the case yesterday afternoon, Advocate Maletroit said aspects of the defendant’s stance were ‘nothing short of staggering’.
‘He cannot seriously suggest she is responsible for any of the horrific violence he inflicted upon her in that bedroom,’ he said.
Advocate Maletroit also referenced a 999 call made by the defendant after the incident, in which he said he had ‘stabbed’ the victim because she was having an affair.
Mr Dos Santos – who maintained that he carried out chest compressions and other medical advice requested by the 999 operator – said he had used such terminology as it was the ‘easiest way to explain’ what had happened.
The trial continues. Commissioner Sir William Bailhache is presiding.
