Society Gists

A 34-year-old woman burst into tears and sobbed in a Munich court on Wednesday after being sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail for attempted manslaughter for a knife attack at last year’s Oktoberfest.
The mother of three children admitted in the Munich district court to attacking a man with a flick knife at one of the beer festival’s glitzy events.
She said that the man had hurled racial abuse at one of her friends, former national German soccer player Patrick Owomoyela.
The woman claimed that she had attacked the man at the so-called Beetle Tent, a meeting point for local celebrities in self-defence.
Her lawyers called for her acquittal.
As a witness, the 36-year-old Owomoyela, whose father is Nigerian, told the court that the man had been extremely aggressive toward him, approaching him with clenched fists and calling him “shit nigger” and “Bimbo.”
During the trial, another witness also claimed that the woman’s millionaire boyfriend had offered him 223,423 dollars to make a false statement if the accused was released from custody.
The names of the woman, the victim of her attack and her boyfriend have not been published under Germany’s strict privacy laws.
Shortly after the incident, witnesses said they saw the woman partying at a ritzy Oktoberfest disco.
The man, who lost a large amount of blood in the attack, later had his spleen removed in an emergency operation.
The woman later apologised to the victim, telling the court that not a day passed when she did not think about the incident.