Spared jail, woman who knifed her boyfriend in face while high on drugs

‘Get me before I kill him’

A WOMAN aged 20 who slashed her boyfriend’s face with a knife has been spared jail after a judge heard she was ‘a young woman of integrity and charm’.

Stephanie Roberts told student Ravi Benitez, 19, she was going to kill him after a night out drinking with his friends.

A court heard the couple had a ‘toxic relationship’ and she had taken the anti-anxiety drug Xanax that evening, which he been regularly supplying her.

Roberts had gone to visit Mr Benitez at Warwick University when, in a ‘high emotional state’, she armed herself with a 7in kitchen knife and began to kick and hack at his door.

She then slashed at his arms and face, accusing him of ‘ trying to possess her’. During the attack she was on the phone to her father, telling him she was going to kill her boyfriend if he did not come and collect her.

Security guards at the halls of residence eventually overpowered and disarmed her.

Roberts admitted wounding with intent at Warwick Crown Court. She was sentenced yesterday to two years in prison suspended for two years and given a restraining order banning her from contact with Mr Benitez.

Adam Western, defending, had argued that it ‘would not be in the interests of justice’ to follow sentencing guidelines and jail her.

He said: ‘This is an emotionally vulnerable young woman who has been the subject of an abusive relationship for five years.

‘She had been subject to controlling behaviour and isolated from her friends. She says he Stephanie Roberts: ‘Intelligent’ manipulated her entirely. He was medicating her with prescription drugs. The effect of those was to make her even more vulnerable.

‘Since this, she has been receiving counselling. She is described as an intelligent young woman of integrity and charm.’

Judge Sylvia de Bertodano said: ‘It was by all accounts a pretty toxic relationship which involved him providing you with Xanax on a regular basis.’ She said Roberts had behaved dangerously and could have caused ‘very serious injuries indeed’.

The judge added: ‘Both he and you are very fortunate you did not do so. But I have read a great deal about you, and both the prosecution and the defence accept I must sentence you according to your basis of plea which makes clear you had for some time been the victim of a mentally abusive relationship.

‘Your circumstances had pushed you to the limit, and the combination of drink and drugs that had been supplied to you by him that night were sufficient to push you over the edge.’

The court heard that during the night out on November 24 last year, there was a row in which Roberts hit Mr Benitez, and when they returned to the halls the situation had become so heated he locked himself in his bedroom.

Roberts, who had borrowed his phone to call her father, with whom she lives in South Kensington, west London, picked up the knife and slashed at Mr Benitez’s door before getting in. Security guards were called by another student, and as they stood in the doorway trying to calm Roberts down, their body cameras recorded her actions.

The footage shows her telling her father on speaker phone that she was not going to kill herself, saying: ‘I would rather kill the person who f***** my life up. I know perfectly well what I’m doing.’

Mr Benitez tried to calm her down, but Roberts – who sat crying in the dock with her hands over her ears as the recording was played – told him: ‘I’m not emotional. I’m letting things out. You tried to possess me.’

She then said to her father: ‘You need to get me before I kill him, you need to get me right now. You come here right now, or it’s the end.’ Brandishing the knife, Roberts walked across the room and sat on the edge of the bed as Mr Benitez pleaded with her: ‘Oh please, Steph, please go away.’ One of the security officers asked her to step back and hand him the knife, telling her: ‘No, don’t, you’ll make it a hell of a lot worse.’

Roberts warded the guards off by pointing the knife at them then, and as her father told her to put the weapon down, she responded: ‘I’m going to go and kill Ravi, is that OK?.

After this, she lashed out with the knife, slashing Mr Benitez in the face and to his hand twice as he tried to protect himself, telling him: ‘You liar, you liar. You lied to me, you liar.’

Roberts then adopted what prosecutors described as ‘the classic stabbing grip’, and lunged across the bed at Mr Benitez’s chest, but failed to make contact.

Prosecutor Steven Bailey said that as a result of the attack Mr Benitez had deep wounds to his cheek and index finger, and a nick to his nose and that his injuries had affected his studies.

But he refused to attend court to give evidence in what was to have been a ‘trial of issue’ over allegations Roberts had made against him in her basis of plea.