A mother-of-three who stabbed her husband with a filleting knife to the heart has been acquitted of the charge of murder after court found her actions to be in self-defense.
The District Court of Western Australia was told that Vainerii Taungaroa Emile-Bruning was at her Perth home with her then13-year-old son when her husband, Alan Bruning, came home drunk with some mates from the pub, reports Perth Now.
They continued drinking in the garage, which escalated to a slapping game that left one man unconscious.
At one point a fight broke out between Vainerii and Alan about cleaning up which escalated to the point where Alan began to beat her.
Her son intervened, at which point Vainerii ran to the kitchen and grabbed the nearest thing she could find – a filleting knife.
‘I asked him to stop, to not come near me,’ she told the court.
‘He scares me. He can’t see me when he’s drinking.’
While the prosecution attempted to argue that Vainerii stabbed Alan in retaliation, the jury agreed with the defense that Alan ran at Vainerii and impaled himself on the knife. The single knife wound to the heart was fatal.
Vainerii’s lawyer, Anthony Eyers told AAP he was pleased with the outcome.
‘It’s not often you get an all-out acquittal on a murder charge in Western Australia.’
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