Lithuanian jailed for slitting French student's throat

A Lithuanian man who tried to kill a young student by slitting her throat as he mugged her to get money for heroin was jailed today for 15 years.

After apologising to his victim in court Aleksejus Belousovas was handed concurrent sentences for attempted murder, serious assault and attempted robbery.

The 29-year-old former soldier left French student Barbara Riouall fighting for her life after stabbing her three times with a foot-long kitchen knife and twisting her neck in an attempt to break it.

In a brave effort to end the vicious mugging the 24-year-old, from Marseilles, played dead and Belousovas dumped her under a stairwell outside her apartment block in Dublin’s Christchurch.

She is extremely lucky to be alive, the court heard.

Defence lawyers had suggested restorative justice be used – where a victim is given the chance to speak to their attacker – but it was rejected.

And sentencing Belousovas at the Central Criminal Court, Mr Justice Barry White said Ms Riouall had been left physically and mentally permanently damaged by the attack.

“You subjected your victim to a terrifying ordeal,” the judge said.

“You have physically scarred and handicapped her and you have emotionally scarred her and had it not been for her quick thinking and presence of mind in all probability she would have been dead today.”

Ms Riouall was studying at Dublin Business School and was attacked yards from the front door of her apartment on May 8, 2005.

Belousovas, with an old address on the North Circular Road, stabbed the young student and slit her throat twice.

He thrust the knife in so far it lodged in her vertebrae and a piece broke off.

After leaving her for dead he went through her pockets to get money to feed his heroin habit but Mr Justice White said his addiction was not to blame.

“On the contrary your condition was that of a reasoning and functioning man unaffected by drugs,” he said.