Drunk Australian husband sleeps through stabbing

A newlywed who stabbed her drunken husband before cleaning the knife and putting it back in the kitchen drawer has received a wholly suspended jail sentence. Sabrina Ann Thorpe, 27, waited for her husband of three months to fall asleep before stabbing him in the leg after a drunken fight, the Supreme Court in Hobart heard. Thorpe told the court her husband had been physically abusive in the past and she "just snapped", grabbing the knife from the kitchen and thrusting it into his leg.

The drunken husband didn't wake, so Thorpe cleaned the knife with a sponge and put it back in the kitchen drawer before going to bed beside him and checking on the bleeding wound throughout the night. When her husband woke the next morning, she told him he must have fallen when he was drunk. The husband accused two friends who were staying at the couple's house of stabbing him, prompting Thorpe to confess. Thorpe told her husband she would never do something like that again, before going to the police station to report her offence.

The court heard the wound required stitches and the husband still suffered numbness in his toe. Justice David Porter said it was a "very wicked thing to do. It was not an impulsive act you waited until he was asleep in bed and later took steps to disguise the fact that it was you who had inflicted the wound," he said during the sentencing on Thursday. The court was told the couple's relationship was "a volatile one on both sides" and Thorpe had anger-management issues arising from her difficult childhood.

Justice Porter noted that Thorpe was drunk during the incident and eventually admitted to the crime and reported it to police. He convicted her of one count of wounding and sentenced her to eight months in prison, wholly suspended on the condition that she commits no violent offences for two years. Thorpe is pregnant and currently living apart from her husband because of a family violence order imposed on him as a result of a more recent incident. The court heard that Thorpe wished to maintain the relationship with her husband and had voluntarily undertaken counselling to address her anger issues.