The East Brabant court does not impose a sentence on a now eighteen-year-old woman from Rosmalen for a fatal stabbing on a terrace in March last year. According to the judge, the woman made a reflexive movement with a knife. It was not her intention to stab 22-year-old Jordy Gruijters to death, says the judge.
On the terrace in Rosmalen, an argument broke out that Saturday evening. The 22-year-old victim was fatally hit in the chest with a cutlery knife.
The Public Prosecution Service (OM), which prosecuted the then seventeen-year-old suspect for manslaughter and two assaults, already concluded on the basis of camera images that there was severe weather. The court agrees.
The suspect had the carving knife in her hand when she was attacked by Jordy and had to defend herself. According to the court, the woman acted in a reflex.
She is therefore acquitted of manslaughter or wrongful death for not knowingly stabbing him. “She wanted to keep him at a distance and only realized she had hit him when she saw the blood on the knife,” the court said.
The stabbing followed after an argument with the victim’s sister and girlfriend
An argument preceded the stabbing at 9:30 p.m. that evening, in which the suspect’s sister and Jordy’s then heavily pregnant girlfriend were punched in the street. Jordy was then called, who sought confrontation with the suspect and a sixteen-year-old friend of hers on the terrace.
According to eyewitnesses, he came walking “aggressively and terrifyingly onto the terrace”. The court says that there was an instantaneous attack and an acute threat. The suspect felt seriously threatened, the court said. “She literally had her back against the wall. She had no real opportunity to escape Jordy’s attack.”
The judge did, however, sentence the woman to 120 hours of community service, of which 60 hours are suspended, for assaulting the victim’s sister and girlfriend. In December, the Public Prosecution Service had demanded 100 hours of community service and a month’s suspended juvenile detention before the juvenile court for the abuse.
