Attacker cut victim’s throat and said ‘die’

COURT: Woman, 25, sentenced to eight years in jail for knifing boyfriend’s mother

A woman was jailed for eight years yesterday after cutting the throat of her partner’s mother.

Sailita Bleive turned up at the older woman’s home armed with a knife as she went searching for her partner.

But Bleive, 25, used the weapon to attack Evija Tomina at her address in Kirkcaldy before calling emergency services.

The mother-of-one told the call handler: “I cut someone’s throat.”

She confirmed the victim was breathing but when she was asked if there was serious bleeding, she replied: “I don’t know and I don’t care actually.”

She informed the 999 operator that her boyfriend, the victim’s son, had lied to her that he was at college.

Judge Lord Brailsford told Bleive at the High Court in Edinburgh: “You were found guilty by a jury after trial of one charge of assault with various aggravations and attempted murder.”

Bleive had denied attempting to murder her victim at her home in Atholl Terrace, Kirkcaldy, on February 4 this year at a trial last month, but was found guilty of the offence.

She repeatedly struck Ms Tomina, 51, on the neck with a knife, forced her to the floor and punched and kicked her to her severe injury, permanent disfigurement and to the danger of her life.

Bleive, formerly of Kirkcaldy’s Dallas Drive, had her special defence of selfdefence rejected by the jury.

She told the court she went to the victim’s house to contact her boyfriend.

She said she put a knife in her pocket for the five-minute walk and added: “I am scared to go out when it is dark.”

She found her partner Rinalds Fridenbergs at his mother’s home and asked him why he was not responding to her calls. She asked if he had been drinking and been to college, but got no response, she said. She did notice a vodka bottle on a table.

Bleive claimed the victim tried to gently push her out the room and alleged she brought the knife out to “scare her off” and when she tried to push the older woman she was cut with the weapon.

But the court heard that during the attack Bleive told her victim: “Die.”

Bleive told the court that after the wounds were inflicted she “kicked her while she was still on the ground”.

Prosecutor John Macpherson told Bleive that she concocted a story about Ms Tomina trying to choke her, but she maintained she did not lie.

The victim needed 20 stitches.