Accusation: attempted murder

Kitchen assistant: “Just wanted to stab him for a moment”

The scene of the crime was a pizzeria in Pinzgau (symbolic image).(Bild: Markus Wenzel)

An Italian woman (43) denied the accusation of attempted murder in the Salzburg provincial court on Tuesday. According to the indictment, she allegedly fatally injured a work colleague with a steak knife in a pizzeria in Pinzgau on a night in July. She presented herself as the victim of an assault.

The Italian woman (43) had been working as a kitchen assistant in a pizzeria for just five days. Until she had a bloody altercation with a colleague in the communal kitchen: First she allegedly pressed a broken glass into his chest, then rammed a steak knife with an eleven-centimeter blade into the skin above his heart. "I'll stab you again" were her words when the ambulance attended to the man and took him to hospital, explained the public prosecutor at the trial on Tuesday in Salzburg. Later, she is also said to have pressured the victim and a witness to give false testimony.

Accused tells self-defense version
However, the previously blameless mother of four considers herself to be the victim: she gave a spirited account of an alleged assault by her work colleague on the night of July 2nd, when the two of them were drinking with a third colleague on their night off. She only defended herself, says the woman: "I just wanted to stab him for a moment. I didn't think such a small knife would cause such a wound." Only emergency surgery saved the compatriot.

The case will be heard again on Friday in Salzburg Provincial Court.