A 53-year-old man has received a sentence of five years less one day in prison after stabbing a former intimate partner in the parking area of a Benidorm hotel where she worked.
The ruling, issued by a court of Alicante’s First Section, finds the defendant culpable of attempted homicide, stating that he acted with the intent to kill his ex-partner, who shares a minor child with him, a 12-year-old boy.
Beyond the prison term, the verdict imposes a protection measure that bars the accused from approaching the victim at a distance greater than 500 meters for nine years, along with an additional ten years of supervised freedom. The sentence also includes the removal of parental authority over the shared child.
This gender-based violence incident occurred on April 27, 2023, when the defendant traveled to the hotel parking lot and waited for the woman to arrive at the start of her work shift. After she parked his motorcycle, the defendant charged at her, shouting threats such as “I am going to kill you,” and delivered several stab wounds with a small knife to her face and left chest area.
She defended herself with the helmet she held, until a group of hotel workers noticed the assault, came to her aid, and separated the defendant, who was detained by the police and placed in provisional detention the same day.
The judicial decision notes that the stabbings caused injuries of varying severity, including a four-centimeter facial cut and another about one centimeter near the heart.
The court states that if the blade had penetrated the thoracic cavity, it could have reached the heart and resulted in the victim’s death, as suggested by the expert reports.
During his testimony at trial on the 7th, the defendant admitted the acts when questioned by the court president, but then claimed that he could not remember much due to taking many medications.
The victim, for her part, described the attempted homicide, a version corroborated by three hotel workers who helped her.
In setting the sentence, the court applied aggravating factors related to kinship and gender, along with an incomplete mental impairment defense based on the belief that the defendant suffers from a cerebrovascular disease causing memory and cognitive disturbances, while consciousness remains clear.
The court concluded that the defendant did not retain intact intellectual functions and decision-making capacity, resulting in partial imputability impairment.
The sentence can be appealed to the Valencian Community High Court within ten days of notification.