Suspect claims fatal stabbing of student was 'self-defense'
Zamir M. told the court in Utrecht on Tuesday that he stabbed 24-year-old Laura Korsman to death in her home out of "self-defense" in July last year. According to him, it was the young medical student who grabbed a knife, NU.nl reports.
Korsman was stabbed to death in her student home on Bosboomstraat in Utrecht on July 11th, 2018. M., Korsman's ex-boyfriend, was arrested that same day. He is accused of murder or manslaughter, and of stalking the young woman.
M. told the court that they had a fight in the victim's room on the day of her death. According to the 32-year-old man, she grabbed a knife from behind the couch on which the two of them sat. "The knife came at me perilously", he said. "Due to the struggle, the knife entered her body twice because of her own fault." After that, M. said, he took the knife and stabbed her to death in a kind of haze. When the court asked whether this was done in self-defense, he answered: "Yes, definitely."
The court found the suspect's story hard to believe. None of Korsman's housemates ever saw the knife in question before her murder. And the police concluded after investigation that the young woman was unable to defend herself.
M. also told the court that he entered Korsman's home through the neighbor's home in July last year. He waited three hours on the woman's balcony for her to come home. According to M., he was under the influence of drugs on the day of the murder and was hallucinating. Before going to Korsman's home, he had been at a party on Melkweg in Amsterdam.
Initially, M.'s answers to the court's questions were full of bravado. "There were two people and something happened", he said. "It got completely out of hand and I think it is terrible what happened."
The 32-year-old man stalked his victim for a long time before her death, also posing as other people. The man confessed to this suspicion against him by saying that he "harassed her". The woman was harassed to such an extent that the police gave her a panic button and issued a restraining order against M. According to the court, the man's behavior seemed "obsessive".
Once, M. pretended that he had been in a serious car accident. He showed up at the University Medical Center Utrecht, where Korsman worked, in a wheelchair and a sling. Other staff forced him to leave the building.
