The path to the murder weapon was not far.

There was a knife in the bedroom to cut fruit for a fruit plate.

Chantal S. grabbed this knife one night in September last year, as the 21-year-old woman says.

Since Monday she has had to answer for manslaughter before the Darmstadt Regional Court.

According to the indictment, she stabbed her partner of the same age, with whom she lived in an apartment in Rödermark, with a knife in the chest.

The stab injured the heart, the victim was dead a few minutes later, as prosecutor Cyd Hergenröder states in her indictment.

According to her, Chantal S. first got the knife out of the kitchen.

The accused admits the stab in the girlfriend's chest, as stated in a statement,

Jan Schiefenhoevel

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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In this statement, the defendant reports in detail on the relationship with the later victim, which lasted a few months.

At first it was the best time she had ever had with a partner.

But then, according to her, there were repeated arguments because the girlfriend was jealous and did not want to tolerate meetings with other friends.

Mutual violence occurred in the dispute, and they had kicked and beaten each other.

Eventually, her ex-boyfriend got in touch with her again.

The girlfriend suspected that and became jealous, but had someone else himself.

However, the defendant does not speak of a separation.

violence in the family

On the night of the fact, the girlfriend returned from a family party, she herself was drunk from several cans of whiskey with lemonade.

There was a fight again.

After the bloody act, she left the apartment and walked aimlessly through the night, but called an ambulance for her friend.

Some of this description is confirmed by the statements of other witnesses, such as the family members of the killed, who reported that the later victim was unhappy in the weeks before the crime, sometimes had blue spots on the arms and on the forehead.

Unlike the accused, however, the relatives report that the couple separated.

In the weeks before the crime, the two women only shared the apartment, the later victim lived in the bedroom, Chantal S. in the living room.

Messages from the evening before the crime, on the other hand, can be understood as an exchange between a couple, as the presiding judge Marc Euler says.

At the beginning of the day of the trial, the defendant described her life in detail.

She has bad memories of punishments and restrictions from her childhood.

"I was never allowed out," says Chantal S., meetings with friends were not allowed.

If she dawdled on her way home from school, she was beaten with a belt.

Otherwise the mother put her under the cold shower as punishment.

Files from the youth welfare office, presented by the defense attorney, show that the accused must have grown up in extremely difficult circumstances.

It says that Chantal was "taken and left alone".