A migrant in Vienna who stabbed his girlfriend at a subway station sent a text to an Austrian woman he’d just met beforehand claiming that he wanted to kill her.
On Tuesday night emergency services in the Austrian capital of Vienna rushed a young woman to a local hospital after she had been stabbed repeatedly in the head. The 21-year old Afghan national was attacked at the Wahringer subway station in the early hours of the evening by her 27-year-old boyfriend, both are asylum seekers.
New details have emerged that the attempted killer sent a text to a 30-year-old Austrian woman telling her his intentions to kill his girlfriend, Kronen Zeitung reports.
According to police, in the immediate aftermath of the brutal attack, a motive was unclear. Police did describe the attack in brutal detail noting that the 27 year old had not only stabbed the victim but also beaten her skull against an iron stand. The stand was located inside of the subway station where construction crews were making repairs to the station’s stairs.
Police spokesman Thomas Keiblinger said that the victim was in critical condition and has since recovered partially after being put into an artificial coma. Mr. Keiblinger also noted that the attacker, who is now in police custody, gave police no resistance and freely handed them the folding knife he used to assault his victim.
The new information provided by the 30-year-old Austrian woman may shed some light on the motivation for the attack. According to the woman she did not take the text message from the attacker seriously saying: “I thought it was a bad joke and did not go into it.” Though she could not explain the drastic escalation of violence, the Austrian woman did shed some light on the relationship between the pair of asylum seekers. She claimed that the 21 year old was an incredibly controlling lover saying: “His partner was insanely jealous and continuously controlled his cell phone.”
The 21-year-old victim continues to struggle for her life, according to authorities, who say that it could take several days to see whether or not she survives the brutal attack.
Attacks by migrants on their spouses over jealousy or other issues have grown in the past year. In Germany a case came before a court of a Syrian migrant who brutally killed his wife at the asylum home they lived in. As in Vienna the attacker had threatened to kill his spouse out loud in the home but no one paid attention, which cost the 32-year-old Syrian woman her life.
Migrant violence against women on the streets of Vienna is also on the rise with several high profile cases like the stabbing of a cleaner in the migrant suburb of Ottakring and the strangling of an American au pair in her home by a migrant from Gambia.