A 54-year-old woman from Carinthia was sentenced on Thursday at the Klagenfurt Regional Court because she allegedly infected her neighbor with the coronavirus in December 2021, who then died of Covid. The woman was sentenced to four months’ suspended imprisonment and a fine of 800 euros (200 daily rates of four euros each) for grossly negligent homicide. The verdict was not yet final.
Second hearing due to corona infection
This was the second time that the woman had to answer to the Klagenfurt Regional Court in connection with her corona disease. Last summer, she had already been sentenced to three months’ suspended imprisonment for intentionally endangering people through communicable diseases. However, the woman had been acquitted of the charge of grossly negligent homicide because she allegedly infected her neighbor, who was seriously ill with cancer and who died. This part of the verdict was then overturned: the second instance found that the chains of infection had not been sufficiently discussed.
Matching of virus DNA
Forensic medicine determined that the cancer patient died of pneumonia caused by Covid. A virological report showed that the virus DNA from the PCR samples of the defendant and the deceased matched. The sample even surprised the expert, he said on Thursday: “100 percent coverage is very rare because coronaviruses change very quickly.” It was “almost 100 percent” likely that the defendant had transmitted the infection.
Controversial statements about contact in the stairwell
In the current trial, single judge Sabine Götz had the task of shedding light on possible contacts between the defendant and her neighbor. Here, it was one person’s word against another’s: the deceased’s son and daughter-in-law, as well as his wife, stated that there had been contact in the stairwell on December 21, 2021 (i.e. when the defendant must have already known that she was suffering from Covid). The defendant was standing in her doorway in the hallway of the apartment building, with the deceased standing opposite her.
“She looked really sick. I asked her if she had corona, she said no and said she only had the flu,” the son said. He was very worried because he knew how dangerous a Covid infection could be for cancer patients. The defendant vehemently denied this: “That day I could neither get out of bed nor talk because I was so sick. So it couldn’t have happened like that,” she said.
During the trial, the woman had also said that a corona infection had never been an option for her: “It was clear to me that this was bronchitis, like the one I get every year in winter.” Her doctor had also made another worrying statement by the defendant to the police: she “certainly won’t let herself be locked up,” she had told him when a rapid corona test had come back positive.
Reasons for the judgment
“I really didn’t take the verdict lightly,” said Judge Götz in her statement. And she continued: “I feel sorry for you personally – I think that something like this has probably happened hundreds of times. But you are unlucky that an expert has determined with almost absolute certainty that it was an infection that came from you.” This gives her the certainty required for a guilty verdict, said the judge.
