Dover woman stabbed five times in random knife attack outside bingo hall

Natasza Zakrzewska stabbed a grandmother five times in the back on Biggin Street, Dover. A jury found she carried out the act; she was ruled unfit to stand trial due to paranoid schizophrenia.

Paranoid schizophrenic found to have stabbed Dover grandmother leaving bingo

A woman was stabbed five times in the back by a stranger as she walked home from bingo along Biggin Street in Dover, kentonline.co.uk reports. CCTV footage captured the moment door staff at the nearby Dizzy Donkey club shouted "watch out behind you" before rushing across the street to intervene.

Natasza Zakrzewska, 47, of Salisbury Road, Dover, pulled a large kitchen knife from her bra and rushed up behind the victim without warning or saying a single word. She plunged the blade multiple times into the left shoulder and arm area of the woman's coat.

Prosecutor Michael Hillman told Canterbury Crown Court the attack, which took place on January 17 this year, would have "easily proved" fatal had it not been for the thickness of the victim's clothing and the intervention of door staff he described as "exceptionally brave."

Zakrzewska had, just seconds earlier, confronted two teenage girls with the same knife as they walked home from the cinema in Worthington Street. The girls described her as "stumbling and slurring" as she blocked their path and brandished the sharply-pointed weapon at chest height. They fled to the Dizzy Donkey, where security supervisors alerted Dover District Council CCTV operators, who were then able to locate and track Zakrzewska.

As door staff were tending to the "hysterical" youngsters, they spotted Zakrzewska walking towards them before she suddenly turned her attention to the victim, who had just left the Gala Bingo venue at the end of what she later described as a "pleasant" evening, with £300 in winnings. The victim was walking past WHSmith when the attack began.

"As she was walking home, she was spotted by the defendant, who turned and started to follow her," Hillman told the court. "Suddenly, the defendant approached her very quickly from behind and it can be clearly seen she is holding a large kitchen knife. Then, it can be clearly seen that she attacks her from behind, stabbing her five times in quick succession and in the back."

The door staff disarmed Zakrzewska and wrestled her to a stop while she continued to struggle with them. A body-worn camera clip captured the blade clattering to the ground.

The victim initially believed she had been punched. She told the court she had heard no approaching footsteps and had briefly thought someone was alerting her to something she had left behind at bingo. "Quickly I realised this was not the case and I felt I was being punched. I then felt a bit of sharp pain but I didn't know what it was," she said. "I turned round and there was a female — I looked at her face and she looked dead behind the eyes. She was just focused on my back area where she was assaulting me. The female didn't say a word."

The victim subsequently described the ordeal as having had a profound physical and psychological impact. Among her injuries was a large stab wound to her back requiring treatment at King's College Hospital in London.

Zakrzewska was arrested at the scene. On being detained, she told police: "I stabbed a woman," adding that it was a "planned" murder bid. She was subsequently charged with attempted murder and one count of threatening another person with an offensive weapon.

She denied both charges and was due to stand trial. However, on Tuesday 30 September, Judge Simon James ruled — after considering six psychiatric reports and hearing expert medical evidence — that Zakrzewska, a paranoid schizophrenic, was neither fit to plead nor fit to stand trial.

A jury was therefore sworn in to determine solely whether Zakrzewska had carried out the act of stabbing, rather than to rule on criminal guilt in the conventional sense. The evidence against her was described in court as "compelling" and was not disputed by her defence team. She was also seen to "smirk and glare" in the immediate aftermath of the attack, the court heard.

Zakrzewska is currently held under the care of the medium secure Trevor Gibbens Unit in Maidstone and was not required to attend the hearing. While in custody, she has repeatedly stated that if released she would commit murder. She also told staff she believed the victim — a woman unknown to her — was running a "torture chamber" at the Gala Bingo venue on Biggin Street.

The two teenage girls, who cannot be identified due to their age, told police they were left "petrified" by the encounter with Zakrzewska earlier that same evening.

Source: The Sun