A 23-year-old Algerian illegal immigrant has been jailed in France for two years for stabbing his neighbor with a butcher’s knife because his neighbor had complained that he was playing his music too loudly, it has emerged.
The attack took place on Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022 at approximately 12:30 p.m., in an apartment building in the town of Paimbœuf in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France.
The court heard how the morning before the assault, the victim, a 45-year-old man, had complained to the defendant’s partner that music was being played too loudly from the defendant’s apartment and trash was being thrown out of the window.
The defendant is then understood to have visited his neighbor in the apartment above, equipped with a butcher’s knife, which he held behind his back before lunging at the victim and attempting to “plant it at throat level.”
Upon arriving at the scene, authorities found the victim with a “gaping wound” in his hand, which is understood to have been a defensive wound as he attempted to protect himself.
The defendant told police a very different story, claiming he had only gone upstairs to talk with his neighbor, and the victim was the one who had actually produced the knife.
“When I tried to grab it, the blade flipped, I don’t know how,” the Algerian migrant claimed, a version of events dismissed by the prosecution and the court.
“It makes absolutely no sense, it is in complete contradiction with the medical conclusions,” prosecutor Marie Deschamps told the court, according to Actu.fr.
The 45-year-old victim had several damaged arteries and tendons in his hand, and three operations were necessary following subsequent infections in the wound.
“There is a risk that he will lose full use of his hand,” said the victim’s counsel.
During a plea of mitigation, the defendant, who is already known to police, begged to be set free, telling the court: “I am innocent, I am here to make my life, the prison is destroying my future.”
The defendant was subsequently sentenced to two years in prison, and the judge also imposed a ban on remaining in France after his sentence, as well as a ban on possessing a weapon for five years.
