Viennese taxi driver stabbed dog owner: 3 years partially suspended sentence

The starting point of the argument was the taxi driver’s belief that the dog had urinated on the bumper of his taxi. The guilty verdict for intentional grievous bodily harm is not final. The 47-year-old filed an appeal against this.

The incident in question took place on January 23rd of this year. A 37-year-old father was walking his dog and his daughter when the animal did its business between parked cars. The taxi driver, sitting in his company car, thought he saw that the bumper of his car had been damaged.

Spleen just missed

He shouted an insult at the dog owner (“You son of a bitch!”), to which the other man verbally retorted. “He immediately jumped out of the car and I heard ‘click’,” the 37-year-old told a jury (chaired by Martina Krainz). With the blade open, the man tried to stab him in the head or neck, which the attacker was able to prevent by blocking his left forearm. The taxi driver then quickly took the knife in his other hand and stabbed him sideways in the back, the witness explained.

The blade penetrated the victim’s body to a depth of seven centimetres and narrowly missed the spleen. The injured man only realised he had been stabbed at home after he had left the scene of the crime. He called the emergency services and was treated at a hospital.

“I wanted him to go away”

The defendant defended himself by claiming self-defense: “Mrs. Rat, I am not guilty.” The other man was “so aggressive, angry”: “He said he was going to finish me off.” He was afraid that the dog owner would damage his car, so he got out and was punched, the 47-year-old claimed. He “just wanted to show” his opponent the knife: “I wanted him to go away.” He must have hit the man during the scuffle.